İngilizce'yi yabancı dil olarak öğrenenlerin tartışmacı yazımlarında tematik yapı ve bağdaşıklık ve incelemesi

This study aimed to analyze the thematic patterns and cohesion of written corpus of argumentative essays of Turkish learners of English and native English speakers. The data written by Turkish students of English, studying at a Department of English Language Teaching, in a state university, and preparatory class students, in a private university, were collected during 2016-2017-spring term. The essays written by undergraduate native speakers of English were accessed from written corpus of LOCNESS. In the scope of the study, thirty essays written by undergraduate native speakers of English and thirty essays written by undergraduate Turkish learners of English were analyzed. Discourse analysis was used in order to analyze cohesion and thematic patterns i.e. the use of references, thematic patterns, conjunctions, ellipsis and substitution and lexical cohesion of students' essays. Among theme types, marked theme and unmarked theme structures were also examined. At the end of the study, similarities and differences in terms of cohesion and thematic pattern properties in essays created by native speakers of English and Turkish learners of English were found. It was found at the end of the study that thematic pattern and cohesive device use had a richer variety in native speaker essays. It was also determined in this study in what ways cohesion and thematic structure of essays written by native speakers were different than essays composed by Turkish learners of English. Key Words: Foreign Language Education, cohesion analysis, thematic pattern analysis, discourse analysis, argumentative essays