Lexical Approach In Teaching Turkish As A Foreign Language: The Implementation of The Verb "Al-"

This study, conducted within the lexical approach paradigm, examines the influence of context and corpus-based instructional practices on enhancing lexical proficiency. The research specifically focuses on the instruction of the polysemous verb "al-" (to take/get). The quantitative aspect of the study was designed using a pretest-posttest matched control group; 21 students at the B1-B2 level constituted the experimental group, while 20 students comprised the control group. In the qualitative aspect, interview and error analysis techniques were used; the qualitative results were used to elaborate the quantitative results. A retention test was conducted for the experimental group nine weeks after the post-test. Interview data were analyzed through inductive qualitative analysis, while activity booklets were examined through error analysis. The findings indicated that the lexical approach for the instruction of the polysemous verb 'al-' was effective in enhancing student achievement. The results of the achievement test showed that the mean scores of the experimental group on the post-test were higher than those of the control group in literal, connotative, figurative, and idiomatic meaning sub-dimensions, and this difference was statistically significant. According to the error analysis, the students showed a decreasing trend in the number of errors made in linguistic units containing the verb "al-" throughout the process. The results of the interviews support the positive outcomes of the implementation. It has been concluded that instructional practices prepared within the lexical approach are effective in enhancing vocabulary proficiency.