Yabancı Dil Olarak Türkçe Öğrenen Özbek Öğrencilerin Sözcüksel Zorluk Algılarını Etkileyen Etmenlere İlişkin Görünümler

Words serve as the fundamental building blocks of a language, possessing both semantic properties that contribute to linguistic content and functional aspects that structure this content in accordance with the rules of the language. Vocabulary instruction is a central component of language teaching, highlighting the necessity of careful word selection in the vocabulary learning process. A variety of criteria and justifications can be taken as a basis in the selection of words to be taught. At this point, the concept of word difficulty becomes a critical factor. Word difficulty is affected by multiple linguistic features such as phonology, spelling regularity, morphological transparency and concreteness and imageability of meaning. This study aimed to identify the linguistic factors contributing to the perceived difficulty of words among Uzbek students learning Turkish as a foreign language. The scanning method was employed. A word difficulty questionnaire consisting of 3 categories and 36 words, namely frequency, semantics and morphology, was administered to 55 students, who were selected using the convenience sampling method and who were learning Turkish as a foreign language in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and who accepted to participate voluntarily. In this study, which aimed to determine the students' perceptions of the difficulty of the words they encountered and know it was observed that various features related to the morphological, semantic and usage dimensions of the words provided important data both in terms of general appearance and comparative appearances within and among themselves. One of the most important stages of word teaching processes is to choose words in accordance with the principle of easy to difficult. Additionally, the study concludes that for more effective and long-lasting vocabulary acquisition, it is essential to consider phoneme count, semantic complexity, and word frequency, prioritizing these features accordingly.