The effect of computer aided education on the skill of word stressing in teaching Turkish as a foreign language

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of computer aided education on the skill of word stressing in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. Single group pre-test and post-test experimental design was used in the study. The group of the study consisted of 23 foreign students in Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University School of Foreign Languages Turkish Preparatory Program in 2014-2015 academic year. To improve the skill of word stressing, computer-assisted prosody training was applied to the students for 5 weeks. Data of the study was obtained from the “Word Stressing Measurement Tool” and the audio recordings of the students. In addition to these, words and compound words in the “Word Stressing Measurement Tool” were grouped according to the rules of Turkish word stress. The audio recordings taken from the students to determine the level of students’ success in word stressing was examined and assessed in terms of fundamental frequency on Praat 3.8.47 speech analysis program. These results were analyzed using paired samples t-test on SPSS 20.0 statistical package software. Whether there is a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the students in the groups of the words and compound words in the “Word Stressing Measurement Tool” formed in terms of the rules of Turkish word stress and in the groups of the participants formed according to their mother tongue or the official language spoken in their countries were found out. As a result of the research, it was found that there was a significant increase in the participants’ success of word stressing. These results indicated that computer aided word stress training has an effect on improving the skill of word stressing in teaching Turkish as a foreign language. © 2018 by authors. All rights reserved.