African Educational Research Journal - Vol. 12 - Full Length Research Paper - The effect of teaching the alphabet with onomatopoeia on writing skills in Turkish lessons for foreigners

Oct 15, 2026

Teaching Turkish to foreigners is difficult because Turkish is phonetically rich and similar sounds are easily confused. Accurate writing and reading depend on punctuation and correct letter forms, including pairs like ı-i, o-ö, u-ü, c-ç, g-ğ, and s-ş. Learners using the Arabic alphabet often struggle with vowels and consonants, harming spelling, writing, and speaking. This study examines how onomatopoeia-supported alphabet instruction affects the writing skills of A1 Turkish learners by comparing essays before and after instruction, showing improvements.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Research ethics and data collection

African Educational Research Journal Vol. 12(2), pp. 94-100, May 2024 DOI: 10. 30918/AERJ.122.24.025 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper The effect of teaching the alphabet with onomatopoeia on writing skills in Turkish lessons for foreigners\# Erhan Akdağ Faculty of Education , Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey. Accepted 15 May, 2024 | ABSTRACT
One of the difficulties in teaching Turkish, which is a phonetically rich language, to foreigners, is that similar sounds are often confused with each other. Since even a single punctuation mark is crucial for writing and reading Turkish letters (ı-i, o-ö, u-ü, c-ç, g-ğ, s-ş, etc. ), students who use the Arabic alphabet have great difficulty writing and pronouncing Turkish words correctly. The difficulties that foreigners have in spelling vowels (ı-i, o-ö, u-ü) and consonants (c-ç, g-ğ, m-n, s-ş) when learning Turkish also have a negative impact on their writing and speaking skills. Especially in essay writing classes, students often misspell words, which makes it necessary to determine and implement more effective strategies in alphabet lessons. When teaching the Turkish alphabet, it is of great importance that the teacher uses “onomatopoeia,” which is considered an important feature of Turkish, to overcome this problem. In this study, the effect of onomatopoeia, the word corresponding to sounds in nature, on writing skills in Turkish classes for foreigners was investigated. This study, taken from a class of nine students at the Afyon Kocatepe University Turkish Language Teaching Centre at A1 level in the semesters of 2013–2014, was based on the analysis of three essays written by the students before and after studying onomatopoeia. The analysis of the data revealed that teaching the alphabet with onomatopoeic words was effective for the students in terms of the letters whose spellings were confused with each other and made a significant contribution to the writing skills of foreigners.
Keywords: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, alphabet, onomatopoeia, writing. | | --- | | E-mail: [erhanakdag@aku. edu.tr](erhanakdag@aku. edu.tr).
\# This study is an improved version of the paper presented at the 7th International Turkish Language Teaching and Learning Congress at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University on June 19–21, 2014.
Research ethics committee approval: The research data were collected before 2020. | INTRODUCTION The 21st century is a time when Turkish is of great interest to foreigners, and learning the language has accelerated considerably. Turkey’s geopolitical position as a link between Asia and Europe and its perception by the peoples of the Middle East as a pioneering and competent player in Islamic civilization played an important role in this acceleration. According to Şimşek and Erdem (2021, p. 268), interest in Turkey and Turkish is influenced by population-related movements in the Middle East, especially after the 2000s, and Turkey’s pro-people approach. The increasing orientation of foreigners toward the Turkish language is also influenced by “the recent orientation of universities toward the international education market, which has gained further momentum after the establishment of the Yunus Emre Institute in 2009 and the opening of a Turkish language teaching center at almost every university after 2010, as well as the fact that Turkey has become one of the destination countries for refugees”(Memiş, 2021, p. 2) . According to Bayyurt and Yaylı(2019, p. 9), the recent importance of teaching Turkish as a foreign language is a result of the increasing interest in the Turkish language, especially in Europe and the Turkish republics. According to Uzun (2013, p. 7), the number of people who want to learn Turkish is increasing significantly, either due to globalization or Turkey’s growing importance in the world, and Turkish language teaching is now considered a serious market in the education sector. In the context of a

FAQs

Why is teaching the Turkish alphabet challenging for foreign learners?

Because similar Turkish sounds and letter distinctions are often confused, and punctuation and correct letter forms (vowel pairs and consonant pairs) are crucial for accurate reading and writing.

What approach does the paper focus on to address alphabet learning problems?

It emphasizes using onomatopoeia—words that correspond to natural sounds—as a teaching feature to support alphabet instruction and improve spelling.

How was the effect of onomatopoeia on writing skills evaluated?

The study analyzed three essays written by nine students at an A1 level before and after studying onomatopoeia, then compared writing performance related to commonly confused letter spellings.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by eBook King