The types of prepositions ın the articles prepared by the turkish and natıve speakers of english in the field of english language teaching: a corpus-based study

Abstract

Studies on corpus, which means a collection of a text that can be worked on, go back to early history. However, as a scientific field, corpus linguistics has gained much importance and improved greatly as a result of the developments in computer technology especially over the last six decades. Actively using computer technology, it is now easy to collect and analyze large volumes of texts in a specific or different languages either in a specific field or various fields, find the most frequently used words or the least used words, and evaluate sentences in terms of their lengths. This technology also allows researchers to compare two or more languages in terms of their linguistic characteristics and carry out several related works for different purposes on different texts that were collected. Analyzing authentic language data provides implications about how the specific elements in a language are used. Corpus studies are also used in English language teaching (ELT) and learning, and today most of the users of a language benefit from corpus reference sources such as grammar books and dictionaries. Prepositions have a significant place in English in terms of their types, and they have different characteristics compared to some other languages including Turkish. This study aims to examine the frequency of some types of prepositions such as the prepositions of space and movement, prepositions of time, prepositions that show logical relationship and participial prepositions, in the articles in the field of ELT prepared by Turkish speakers (TSs) of English and the native speakers (NSs) of English. In the present corpus study, the data were collected from a total of 100 randomly selected articles in the field of ELT, 50 by the TSs and 50 by the NSs. The preposition types that were used only in the abstract and introduction sections were vii analyzed. The data were evaluated using Keyword in Context (KWIC) and Loglikelihood (LL) which are installed or browser-based programs that analyze frequency and log-likelihood of the prepositions in each type. The results of the study also showed the distribution of preposition types that the TSs of English and the NSs of English used in their articles. The study found that although there was a significant difference between the TSs and the NSs in terms of their corpus size, which was bigger in the former, prepositions that show logical relationship were the most salient type in the abstract and introduction sections of the articles of both groups of writers. Among these prepositions, “of” was with the highest frequency in both groups.