An investigation of verb islands in Turkish and English language coursebooks used at primary school level

Learning verbs, as one of the hardest parts of language learning, has been the concern of many studies so far. In these studies, the islands of the verbs have been determined in line with their uses (Tomasello, 1991). Taking the roots from the previous research, the current study aims to investigate the verb islands in Turkish and English language coursebooks used at primary school level. As for the research, electronic formats of Turkish language coursebooks (1st grade to 5th grade) and English language coursebooks (4th and 5th grade) have been used in electronic format, and the coursebook corpora have been created. Via the coursebook corpora, the islands of the verbs have been searched and identified. The basic idea of the study is that if an island is not presented in Turkish or English coursebooks, it may seem difficult for language learner to learn that island. According to the results of the present study, there is not a one to one match between the verbs used in Turkish and English coursebooks. It has been found out that only two English verbs are not presented in Turkish coursebooks. Furthermore, there are more Turkish verbs, which is an expected outcome, since Turkish is the mother tongue. When the islands of the verbs have been taken into consideration, it has been found out that most of the verbs have islands with NP. This study sheds light onto the curriculum planners in terms of choosing the verbs together with their islands. Keywords: Verb Islands, Corpus Linguistics, Coursebooks