A corpus-based study on Turkish EFL learners' written English: The use of adverbial connectors by Turkish learners

Investigation of interlanguage has long been an important subject of second and foreign language acquisition research. The primary goal is to provide better descriptions for SLA and its process. Computer Learner Corpus (CLC), which is a new way of thinking about learner language (Granger, 2004), offers a source of learner data suggesting empirical base for a remarkable and descriptive contributions in the field of SLA. Learner corpus is the computer texture database formed by the language produced by foreign language learners (Leech, 1998). This interlanguage corpora provides a reliable data of learners written production in order to examine the learner grammar and lexis and the main difficulties experienced by learners of English when writing an essay. Many corpus-based studies have been conducted on interlanguage investigation through learner corpora (Altenber & Tapper, 1998; Granger & Tyson, 1998; Aijmer, 2002; Housen; 2002; Neff et al., 2003; Narita et. al., 2004) to gain insight for a better understanding of learner language. In the present study, the use of adverbial connector in L2 writings of Turkish adult learners has been investigated. Adverbial connectors have been examined whether, such usage is effected by a possible transfer from mother tongue and there is a common interlanguage properties among learners from different mother tongue backgrounds. In the study, some common interlanguage properties among different EFL learners have been identified in use of adverbial connectors. In addition, some features in the use of adverbial connectors by Turkish EFL learners have been found in respect of L1 transfer.