Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

• Published in: Studies in second language learning and teaching Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 607 - 627
• Main Authors: Akbas, Erdem, Dincer, Zeynep Olcu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kalisz Wojskowe Biuro Historyczne im. gen. broni Kazimierza Sosnkowskiego 01-12-2021; Military Historical Bureau of Lieutenant-General Kazimierz Sosnkowski; Adam Mickiewicz University; Adam Mickiewicz University Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts; Adam Mickiewicz University Department of English Studies; Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
• Subjects: Accuracy; Analysis; Computational Linguistics; Contrastive Linguistics; Corpus analysis; Corpus linguistics; English (Second Language); english as a foreign language; English as a second language; English as a second language learning; English proficiency; Foreign Countries; Grammar; grammatical morpheme; Interlanguage; Language acquisition; Language and Literature Studies; Language Proficiency; Language Tests; Language Usage; learner corpus; Linguistic Theory; Mastery Learning; Morphemes; Morphological analysis; Native Language; natural order; Order of acquisition; second language acquisition; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Tense; Transfer of Training; Turkish; Turkish language; United Kingdom; South Korea; Japan; Spain; Turkey; natural order; learner corpus; grammatical morpheme; second language acquisition; English as a foreign language
• ISSN: 2083-5205; 2084-1965
• DOI: 10.14746/ssllt.2021.11.4.6

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.