The Comparison of Collocation Use by Turkish and Asian Learners of English: The Case of TCSE Corpus and Icnale Corpus

Abstract

This purpose of this study is to compare the use of collocations by Turkish learners of English and Asian learners of English. Two spoken learner corpora, namely the TC-SLE corpus (Turkish Corpus of Spoken Learner English) and ICNALE corpus (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English) are used in order to make comparisons. The TC-SLE consists of Turkish learners’ spoken English in the form of classroom language, monologues and language used during group work and has been compiled by the researcher. The comparisons are based on the frequency counts of collocations, types of collocations commonly used by the two different groups of learners and the types of inaccuracies done by the two different groups of learners. Based on the comparisons, the study investigates whether first language background has an important effect on the use of collocations and whether different groups of learners have similar problems in the use of English collocations. It was inferred that collocation use is among the most problematic aspects of spoken English for language learners and that factors not limited to but including first language significantly affect the use of collocations.