Analysis of two language usage for confrontation naming, semantic relatedness, categoric generation tasks in turkish adults who use english for specific purposes in a university in eskisehir

Inevitable consequence of living in a multilingual world obliges bi/multilingualism as an absolute necessity. Rise in amount of interaction between languages and cultures results in increased number of bilingual individuals therefore increased number of bilingual clients in clinics of disorders. Findings of this study is thought be beneficial of increased knowledge of language processing in bilingual individuals and to be foundation for therapies.22 Turkish-English bilingual participants, age ranged 25-27 was included in this study. All participants filled language usage questionnaire by which they were assessed for their language usage and ability in both languages. In confrontation naming task, participants were asked to name 152 pictures in Turkish and English and according to naming performance differences, participants are divided into `balanced?, `low-balanced? and `Turkish dominant? group. In semantic relatedness task, participants grade the relatedness level between 117 word pairs in both languages. In category generation task participants produce objects in determined categories which are commonly used in daily living.In English confrontation naming task, significant differences across all groups were determined. No significant difference was observed between the ratings of word pairs in either language across participants in any group in semantic relatedness task. In category generation task, balanced group produced significantly more objects than less balanced group in `food? category in Turkish; balanced group generated significantly more category members than Turkish dominant group in English `clothing? category; balanced group produce significantly more translation equivalent objects than less balanced group in `animals? and `clothing? categories; in addition, significant difference between balanced and Turkish dominant, balanced-less balanced group grow out of translation equivalent words in `farm animals? category. Main results of the study are the following:a)Language usage questionnaires are not effective tools in self-evaluating language abilities among Turkish-English bilinguals; b) Performance based tasks such as naming would be more effective to determine language dominance. c) Languages share same concept memory, d)Balanced bilinguals can retrieve concepts more successfully.