İngilizce ve Türkçe Kelimelerin Fonolojik ve Semantik Benzerliklerinin Kelime Öğretimine Katkısı: S.Ü. Silifke-Taşucu MYO, Turizm ve Otel İşletmeciliği Programı Örneği

Abstract

Tourism is a sector which is of vital importance especially for the economies of developing countries. Therefore, the tourism income has a notable portion in GDP. For a labor-intensive sector like tourism, linguistically capable human resources are an important asset. Tourism personnel who have the professional competence, yet not the linguistic competence, have complications in communication with foreign visitors. Many tourism and accommodation services are carried out via social interaction. This means not only the attitude and behaviour but also the linguistic competence of the service providers and executives carry importance as well. Vocabulary is a noteworthy challenge that is needed to be overcome in foreign language teaching, learning, and usage. Words are the sole instrument via which people convey their emotions, thoughts, and requests. This study aims to analyse a new method of teaching vocabulary, which uses the phonological and semantical similarities of both the native language and the target foreign language. This study, of which the participants consist of students of the Tourism and Hotel Management department, who often find themselves in the intense use of foreign language; solely aims to find whether phonological and semantical similarities in vocabulary facilitate easier learning, and to what extent this vocabulary can be remembered when needed. The study was carried out with 40 words which were specified for the study, 30 of which have the phonological and semantical similarities which suit the objective of the study; by Silifke-Tasucu VSHE, with the target participants being 45 students who are in the Tourism and Hotel Management department. As a result of the study, it was determined that the participants were able to successfully understand the meanings of the experimental words in a much more distinctive level than the nonexperimental words in the measurements made in different time periods.