AVOIDANCE STRATEGY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRODUCTION

Year 2017, Issue: 28, 231 - 242, 31.10.2017

Selma Elyıldırım

Abstract

Avoidance is one of the common strategies employed by second
language learners in the production of the target language when they have
inadequate and incomplete knowledge about grammatical rules and lexical
items. Previous studies have provided evidence for avoidance. In view of this
observation, this study aimed to find out whether Turkish learners of English
avoid any grammatical structure or lexical items while producing English
sentences, and if so, to what extent they use it as a learning strategy to cope
with the difficulties they face in the process of second language acquisition.
The subjects of this study were forty Turkish learners of English
studying English as their major. Data were collected from the compositions
they wrote about one of their earlier memories first in their native language
and then in the target language. They were asked to write the same
composition in both languages to identify the modifications and omissions
they were making in the compositions they wrote in their native language
when producing them in the target language. The results obtained from the
study provided evidence that learners did avoid some structures when writing
their compositions in their second language. The findings of the study were
important as regards its pedagogical implications.

Keywords

Avoidance , learning strategies , second language acquisition , writing

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