IMPROVING THE VOCABULARYN IN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE (TURKISH) OF BILINGUAL CHILDREN WITH FOLK TALES: THE CASE OF SWEDEN, NORWAY AND FINLAND

Abstract

The “We Speak Turkish with Anatolian Tales” activity was carried out with bilingual Turkish children aged 8-13 in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The students who participated in this activity constitute the sample group. Pre-test and post-test were administered to the students by selecting folk tales and words. The study investigated whether the vocabulary of bilingual students could be increased in their native language by using tales. Analyses and inferences were also made according to age, gender, and country. This sample was analyzed using the Single Group Pre-Test-Post-Test Design method, which is one of the weak experimental designs among experimental research methods. The SPSS method focused on the vocabulary and listening comprehension skills of bilingual Turkish children. Frequency Analysis, Shapiro-Wilk Test, Wilcoxon Sign Ranks Test, Kruskal-Wallis Test, Mann Whitney U Test were used to analyze the data. While it was found that the values were close to each other according to countries and gender and did not show significant variability, it was concluded that there were significant changes in the average academic achievement in terms of increasing Turkish vocabulary. It was also observed that there were differences according to age, with the older age group having a significantly higher average.