Abstract:

Derived words constitute a significant part of the vocabulary in Turkish, an agglutinative language. Although inflectional morphemes are a highly debated issue in teaching Turkish as a foreign language, derivational morphemes do not get enough attention. As Turkish is a quite rich language regarding derivational morphemes and derived words, teaching derivational morphemes needs to get more emphasis in teaching Turkish as the mother tongue and as a foreign language. This study presents a framework program for derivational morphemes that need to be included while teaching Turkish as a foreign language and the level required for their instruction. This descriptive study employed qualitative research methods. Data were collected through document analysis of three books to teach Turkish, including the dictionary titled “A Frequency Dictionary of Turkish”, the textbooks titled “Yabancılar İçin Türkçe”, and A1, A2, B1, and B2 level Turkish textbooks from “Yedi İklim Publishing House”. The derived words in those books were identified, and the frequency of their derivational morphemes was measured. The results were organized on separate charts based on the books and type of the derivational morphemes (from noun to noun, from noun to verb, from verb to noun, and from verb to verb). Finally, a chart that shows the frequency of derivational morphemes based on the total data from all resources without separating them based on the type was created. Six experts, who have been teaching Turkish as a foreign language for five to ten years, were asked to share their opinions on the order on this chart. A framework program regarding the types of derivational morphemes and the level for those to be taught was proposed based on expert opinions, derivational morphemes in some Turkish teaching resources, instructional themes in Turkish teaching books, and grammatical functions

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