An investigation of lexical cohesion in the written expressions of students learning Turkish as a foreign language

The aim of this study is to determine the usage of level of lexical cohesion instruments in written expressions of students who learned Turkish as a foreign language. The study was carried out by using a document analysis which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the study consists of 80 students at the level of B1, who are studying at İstanbul Aydın University Turkish Language Teaching, Application and Research Centre between the years of 2017-2019. For this purpose, the usage of level of lexical cohesion instruments in written expressions of 80 students in this study were analyzed using document analysis according to Halliday & Hasan's (1976) classification. As a result of this study the usage frequency of lexical cohesion elements of students who learned Turkish as a foreign language has been identified as; repetition, conceptual field, antonymy, synonym or near synonym, general word, superordinate or hyponymy, serial words, meronymy from high to low. The results acquired from this study compared with previous studies in similar content various solutions are suggested. Keywords: Written expression, lexical cohesion, Turkish as a foreign language.