TRACING NEGATIVE TRANSFER IN THE LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS USED BY TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH IN WRITTEN TEXTS

Öz

A category within lexical transfer, collocation transfer is a significant phenomenon within language production which may have negative effects on writing quality when demonstrated in the form of negative transfer. However, studies on collocation transfer in the texts written by writers of English as a Foreign Language appear to be somewhat limited. In this respect, this study aimed to reveal if the frequently used lexical collocations by undergraduate learners of English with a Turkish L1 background in their written production demonstrated negative collocation transfer. To this end, a corpus of 160 literary analysis essays written by 2nd year undergraduate students of an English Language Teaching (ELT) department in Turkey were investigated to trace negative collocation transfer from Turkish to English. The Detection, Explanation, Evaluation model was used for the analysis of the collocations. The findings indicated that around a quarter of the collocations used by the writers in their texts were negatively transferred from Turkish. The results highlighted the importance of teaching collocations in EFL contexts.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Collocation Transfer,Language Transfer,Lexical Transfer,Negative Transfer

İNGİLİZCE ÖĞRENEN TÜRKLERİN YAZILI METİNLERİNDE KULLANDIKLARI SÖZCÜKSEL EŞDİZİMLİLİKLERDE OLUMSUZ DİL AKTARIMININ İNCELENMESİ

Öz

Sözcük aktarımı içindeki bir kategori olan sıralama aktarımı, dil aktarımı bağlamında olumsuz aktarım şeklinde gerçekleştiğinde yazma kalitesini olumsuz yönde etkileyebilecek önemli bir olgudur. Ancak, yabancı dil olarak İngilizce dilinde yazılmış metinler çerçevesinde eşdizimlilik aktarımı çalışmalarının sınırlı sayıda olduğu görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışmada anadili Türkçe olan lisans öğrencilerinin sık kullandığı sözcüksel eşdizimlilik örneklerinde olumsuz eşdizimlilik aktarımı bulunup bulunmadığını göstermektir. Bu amaçla, Türkiye’deki bir İngiliz Dili Eğitimi bölümünün 2. Sınıf lisans öğrencileri tarafından yazılan 160 edebi inceleme kompozisyonundan oluşan bir bütünce oluşturulmuştur. Sözcüksel eşdizimlilik örneklerinde olumsuz dil aktarımı tespiti için Gilguin’in (2008) Tespit, Açıklama, Değerlendirme modeli kullanılmıştır. Bulgular, yazarların metinlerinde kullandıkları sözcüksel eşdizimliliklerin yaklaşık dörtte birinin Türkçe’den olumsuz biçimde aktarıldığını göstermiştir. Çalışmanın bulguları yabancı dil eğitimi bağlamında eşdizimlilik öğretiminin önemini vurgulamaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Eşdizimlilik Aktarımı,Dil Aktarımı,Sözcüksel Aktarım,Olumsuz Aktarım

Kaynakça

1. Aksan, Y., Aksan, M., Koltuksuz, A., Sezer, T., Mersinli, Ü., Demirhan, U. U., Yılmazer, H., Kurtoğlu, Ö., Atasoy, G., Öz, S. & Yıldız, İ. (2012). Construction of the Turkish National Corpus (TNC). Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluations, Istanbul, Turkey. Retrieved from http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/pdf/ 991_Paper.pdf
2. Alonso, M. R. (1997). Language transfer: Interlingual errors in Spanish students of English as a foreign language. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 10, 7-14. https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.1997.10.01.
3. American National Corpus (2002). Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania. Available from http://www.anc.org/
4. Anthony, L. (2014). AntConc (Version 3.4.3)[Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Retrieved from http://www.laurenceanthony.net/on 28.10.2018.
5. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.
6. British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). (2007). Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Available from http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk
7. Brown, H.D. (2004). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Longman.
8. Carter, R. (1987). Vocabulary applied linguistics perspectives. New York: Routledge.

9. Cenoz, J. (2001). The effect of linguistic distance, L2 status and age on cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition. In J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen, & U. Jessner (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 8–20). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
10. Church, K., & Hanks, P. (1989). Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Association of Computational Linguistics (pp. 76-83), Vancouver, British Columbia.
11. Cook, V. (1988). Designing a basic parser for CALL. CALICO journal, 6(1), 50-67.
12. Cresswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. Upper Saddle Creek, NJ: Pearson Education.
13. Dağdeviren Kırmızı, G. (2018). Lexical Errors and Linguistic Calques as Lexical Transfer in EFL Writing: A Case Study. Başkent University Journal of Education, 5(2), 99-106.
14. De Angelis, G., & Selinker, L. (2001). Interlanguage transfer and competing linguistic systems in the multilingual mind. In J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen, & U. Jessner (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 42–58). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
15. Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
16. Ellis, R. (1997). Second language acquisition. In Oxford Introduction to Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17. Gass, S.M., Behney, J., & Plonsky, L. (2013). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York: Routledge.
18. Granger, S. (1996), ‘From CA to CIA and back: An integrated approach to computerized bilingual and learner corpora’, in: K. Aijmer, B. Altenberg and M. Johansson (eds) Languages in Contrast. Papers from a Symposium on Text-based Cross-linguistic Studies. Lund 4-5 March 1994. Lund: Lund University Press. 37-51.
19. Hammarberg, B. (2001). Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 production. In J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen, & U. Jessner (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 21–41). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
20. Henriksen, B. (2013). Research on L2 learners’collocational competence and development. A progress report. In C. Bardel, C. Lindqvist, & B. Laufer (Eds.), L2 vocabulary acquisition, knowledge and use, New perspectives on assessment and corpus analysis. Eurosla Monographs Series, 2, 11–28. European Second Language Association
21. Herwig, A. (2001). Plurilingual lexical organization: Evidence from lexical processing in L1-L2-L3-L4 translation. In J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen, & U. Jessner (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 115–137). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
22. Hill. J. (2000). Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation (pp. 47-67). London: Language Teaching Publications.
23. Howarth, P. (1998). Phraseology and second language proficiency. Applied Linguistics, 19, 24-44.
24. Hummel, K. M. (2014). Introducing second language acquisition: Perspectives and practices. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
25. Ide, N., Suderman, K. (2004). The American National Corpus First Release. Proceedings of the Fourth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Lisbon, 1681-84.
26. Jarvis, S. (2000), Methodological rigor in the study of transfer: identifying L1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon, Language Learning, 50(2), 245-309.
27. Jarvis, S. (2009). Lexical transfer. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 99–124). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
28. Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Cross linguistic influence in language and cognition. New York, US: Routledge
29. Laufer, B., & Waldman, T. (2011). Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: a corpus-analysis of learners’ English. Language Learning, 61(2), 647-672.
30. Lewis, M. (Ed.). (2000). Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach. London: Language Teaching Publications.
31. Meriläinen, L. (2010). Language Transfer in the Written English of Finnish Students, Publications of the University of Eastern Finland. Dissertations in Education, Humanities and Theology, no 9, Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland. Retrieved from http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_isbn_978-952-61-0230-6/.
32. Monya, A. (2010). Teaching lexical collocations to raise proficiency in foreign language writing: a case study of first year English students of Guelma University. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Algeria.
33. Namavar, F. (2012). The relationship between language proficiency and use of collocation by Iranian EFL students. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 18(3), 41-52.
34. Nesselhauf, N. & Tschichold, C. (2002). Collocation in CALL: An investigation of vocabulary-building software for EFL. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 15(3), 251-279.
35. Nesselhauf, N. (2003). The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 223-242
36. Phoocharoensil, S. (2011). Collocation errors in EFL learners’ inter language. Journal of Education and Practice, 2(3), 103-120.
37. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
38. Sadighi, S. (2012). An account of English lexical collocations errors through L1 transfer. Iranian EFL Journal, 8(6), 38-49.
39. Shih, R. (2000). Collocation deficiency in a learner corpus of English from an overuse perspective. Proceedings of 14th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, 281-288.
40. Shitu, F. M. (2015). Collocation Errors in English as Second Language (ESL) Essay Writing. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Cognitive and Language Sciences, 9(9), 3270-3275
41. Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
42. Turkish National Corpus, v3.0 (2018). Available from https://www.tnc.org.tr.
43. Wang, Y., & Shaw, P. (2008). Transfer and universality: collocation use in advanced Chinese and Swedish learner English. ICAME Journal, 32, 201-232.
44. Wang, D. (2011). Language Transfer and the Acquisition of English Light Verb+ Noun Collocations by Chinese Learners, Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 34(2), 107-125.
45. Wu, Y. (2016). The effects of utilizing corpus to correct collocation errors in L2 writing – Students’ performance, corpus use and perceptions. In S. Papadima-Sophocleous, L. Bradley, & S. Thouesny (Eds.), CALL communities and culture – Short papers from EUROCALL 2016 (pp. 479-484). Research-publishing.net. doi: 10.14705/rpnet.2016.eurocall2016.610.
46. Yamashita, J., & Jiang, N. (2010). L1 Influence on the Acquisition of L2 Collocations: Japanese ESL Users and EFL Learners Acquiring English Collocations. TESOL Quarterly, 44(4), 647–668. doi:10.5054/tq.2010.235998
47. Ye, Z. (2019). Chinese to English Lexical Transfer Errors in the Writing of Rural Senior High School Students. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 9(6), 645-654. doi: 10.17507/tpls.0906.06
48. Yıldız, M. (2016). A Cross-Linguistic Inquiry into the Potential Reasons for the Avoidance of English Phrasal Verbs: The Case of Turkish and Norwegian EFL Learners. Linguitics Journal, 10(1), 124-140.
49. Zingräf, M. (2008). V+N miscollocations in the written production of university level students. ELIA, 8, 91-116.