Effect of phonetic association on lexis learning in natural language context: A comparative study of English, French and Turkish words

Mother tongue acquisition starts with words and grammar acquired spontaneously by means of communication, while at school foreign language learning takes place based on grammar. Vocabulary learning is very often neglected or rather it turns into an individual activity. The present study, which is considered to be unique on its own, is to reveal the effect of phonetic association method within the context of natural languages on efficiency and retention of vocabulary teaching. To be more concise, this is to assess the rate of learning homonymous English and French words with Turkish as well as success rate of retention of the words learned. The sample of the study consists of 6th grade students learning English at 3 junior high schools and 9th grade students learning French at 3 high schools, which are socio-economically in good-state. These grades are the first years when students start to learn foreign languages systematically. A total of 70 respondents, 21 female and 14 male 6th graders and 19 female and 16 male 9th graders, participated in the study.  Structured interview method was used in this research. A phonetic association test of 25 English and 25 French words homonymous with Turkish words was developed, and it was conducted on the groups in different time zones: the rate of learning words was measured in the first week for four hours while in the second week the success rate of recalling the words was evaluated.  Descriptive and content analysis were used to interpret and analyze the data. The results have suggested that those learning English were better than those learning French in learning vocabulary by means of phonetic association method and their rate of acquisition was higher while the rate of success of both groups increased in the second week compared to the first week. However, the rate of success of those learning English was found higher. Learners of English in the second week remembered more words than those learning French. These results could be related to the difficulty level of the words or the attitude of learners toward languages they were studying. Key Words: Association, word, teaching, memory, sound, meaning.