International Journal of Language Academy

1-18

Authors: Mesut GÜN & İlhami KAYA

One of the problems in our education system is foreign language teaching. In addition to foreign language teaching in our country, it is known that different methods such as foreign language education are applied. Despite the different methods applied, it can be clearly seen that the attainment of the foreign language teaching in the schools does not reach the aim if the second language learning rate across the country is taken into consideration. With the recent change in our education system, it has been decided to start foreign language teaching from the primary school and this change has been implemented. In recent years, thoughts of teaching foreign language and main language at the same time in early age will bring some problems are also seen. In this study, the opinions of Turkish teachers about the effects of starting foreign language teaching from primary school on their main language education are evaluated. The aim of this study is to determine the positive and negative contributions of foreign language teaching at early ages to Turkish education, starting from the opinions of primary school Turkish teachers about foreign language teaching at an early age. In this study, the interview method was used and a semi-structured interview form consisting of six questions prepared by experts was applied on participants during the interview. The sample of the research consists of 24 Turkish teachers working in different cities. The data gained from the participants were evaluated using the content analysis method. At the end of the research, the thoughts of Turkish teachers show that foreign language teaching is not appropriate in early age, negatively affecting main language education, giving less importance to main language education than foreign language education in our country and that foreign language teaching would fail without successful main language education. As a result of the research, various suggestions were made for foreign language education in our country.

33-46

Authors: Işıl AYDIN ÖZKAN

Valency is a term which describes a language unit's demand or its requirement completion in a larger unit with other elements. A valency relation consists of two different types of elements. The first one of these is a unsaturated or incomplete element: verb, noun, adjective, preposition. The second type of elements are the proper elements to saturate incomplete and unsaturated element: noun etc. The term "valency" describes also with what kind of case marker the nouns in a sentence are bind to the verb, noun, adjective or preposition that are in their governor position. As for the valency change, it is generally the differentiation of government frame and consequently the valency of a verb as a result of a certain syntactic, semantic or pragmatic processes. These processes that change the valency can be divided into two as semantic processes and morphological processes. The valency changing semantic processes in Turkish are semantic change and polysemy. In this study, firstly it will be dwelled on valency and valency change notions and then valency changing semantic processes will be tackled.

61-73

Authors: Zekerya BATUR, Gülten ERKEK, Nesime ERTAN ÖZEN & Mevlüt ELLİALTI

This study aims to find out the mistakes of the attendants in writing. The study is descriptive and it is done by document review method. Data of the study has been derived from the writing tasks which were determined through the experts view and are suitable for the attendants. Attendants wrote in autobiography and memoir genres. Study group consists of 5 different groups; 4th grade primary schools students, 7th grade secondary school students, 9th grade high school students, first grade university students and varied-age students studying at public education centre. Each group has 10 and totally there are 50 attendants in the study. Findings have been handled into two different ways as writing errors and incoherency. Writing errors have been analysed under the titles of using capital letters, number writing, proposition and conjunction writing, and punctuation. Capital letter title is divided into sentence beginning, proper noun, heading and unnecessary usage subheadings; and punctuation title is divided into full stop, comma, apostrophe and terminal point subheadings. Incoherency have been analysed under the titles of using unnecessary word, element deficiency, subject-verb agreement, object-verb agreement. As the result of the study it is seen that there is no significant difference among the attendants from different ages and different education levels. This shows the inadequacy of Turkish education clearly.

87-101

Authors: Mustafa YİĞİTOĞLU

Begining to gain more space as a content after 1950s in the Turkish novel, the village and town life takes place in Ömer Polat’s novels. Mentioning many issues, the author does not neglect to describe the status of women in the provincial order ruled by its own rules. The woman, perceived as a “female” rather than an “individual” is processed from Polat’s first novels. The novelist narrates the woman in the country, taking advantage of his own life adventure. In this respect, there is a parallelism between the fictional world and the real world. In other words, the women in the novel are those who can be observed in the related periods. It is said that this still holds true even today, limited though. In this paper, five published novels of Ömer Polat have been examined and the aspects that could be associated with the position of woman have been established. On the one hand, the social status of the woman has been evaluated and on the other hand the woman has been narrated as an individual. Particularly, the first three novels of the author carries rich themes about women.

113-127

Authors: Fatma ÖZTÜRK DAĞABAKAN

In this study, it is aimed to discuss the language of youth in Turkish and German social media. Today, the internet has become an indispensable habit of the individuals in every part of the society. The society carries out the communication of the individuals through the internet largely, and social media tries to clarify the issues that they wonder about. Especially young people in society are communicating through social media at every moment of the day. This study contains the linguistic behaviors of young people. The physical and social development of young people also affects their behavior and language use. The language of young people is also reflected in their use in social media. As a result, a different language emerges in social media. In the theoretical section that constitutes the first part of the work, the details of the subject will be revealed by starting from the definition of youth language. In the empirical part of the essay social media discourses in Turkish and German will be examined in terms of both languages. Findings will be evaluated in the context of the two uses of youth language. As a result of this evaluation, it will be seen, what kind of usage field of Turkish and German youth language will be reached and what kind of similarities and differences the youth language in Turkey and Germany show in terms of social media. In the study, comparing the discourses of Turkish and German will be carried out by using contrastive discourse analysis method in general

139-161

Authors: İlyas KAYAOKAY

This article is basically divided into two parts. In the first part, information is given about couplets in which the villages are used in gazel. In the second part; Information about the processing of penname as redif is given as a different mahlas use case. The reason for preferring the ophthalmic variant as the species to be studied; Because of the more traditional use of the penname in the gardens. The penname in the gardens are usually mentioned once in many times, usually once. However, it is also seen that more than one use of the mahlas is used in different couplets other than the maxilla. It is understood that these uses are largely consciously preferred from unconscious practices. The fact that the poets use the repertoire as a redif has attracted attention as a more original structure within the tradition of divan literature. In general, we can interpret these different uses of the mahlas as poets' attempts to break the perception of tradition, to attract attention, and to bring innovation. The findings obtained in this study were obtained as a result of examining the gazel section of 519 divans. This study aims to better understand the tradition of penname which has an important place in divan literature.

170-180

Authors: Ayhan DİRİL

In this article the writer has presented nine authentic activities by using poems to teach English in level B1-B2.The aims of these activities are to present teachers new ideas by using poems more actively to increase the effect and motivation in English language teaching to develop vocabulary, pronunciation and create a warm atmosphere in language learning. Poetry as an art of rhythmical composition for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or lofty thoughts can be taught at schools with the help of some relaxing activities apart from memorization so that the learners could overcome their verse phobia. Since relaxation of the mind is important the learners should be free of all psychological barriers and fears while studying the language with poems too. By this article it was aimed to bring new brainstorming solutions to teaching poetry apart from classical teaching methods at schools. With the help of these activities the learners will be able to enrich their vocabulary and support their grammar structure, form a warm atmosphere among their classmates, take poetry into brain chemistry by memorization games, have fun and learn at the same time and develop their writing skills in English learning classes. Activities such as substitution drills, group competitions, grammar translation, suggestopedia, vocabulary teaching by games and writing can be used in poems in teaching English.

189-204

Authors: Suphi Güneş ALAMDAR

A society is required to consist of most of the citizens with individual autonomy in order to be democratic. An individual with conscious on democratic culture acts at his/her own will and expresses his/her thoughts freely. Individual autonomy develops within a long period beginning from early childhood. In this process, it could be beneficial to use the qualified books of children's literature as an effective stimulus. The children's books have an important function in creating individual values related to children, people and life beginning from early childhood. In childhood, in which personality is shaped, emulation is the most effective and the fastest way of learning. Therefore, it is crucial that the books consisting of heroes with individual autonomy are brought together with children. It can be said that these qualitative books will contribute to the development of individual autonomy of child and youth. The aim of this study, as a descriptive research, is to determine the importance of The Little Black Fish, one of the books of children's literature, considered to provide contributions to develop the individual autonomy of child and youth in this process. In line with this purpose, firstly the concepts of individuality, autonomy, individual autonomy and subservient individual are explained; then the function of child literature in self-autonomy is emphasized. The book is analyzed according to the classification of the concept of "individuality". There are two subcategories of self as "individual autonomy” and "subservient individual". As a result of the study, it is concluded that the hero named The Little Black Fish has individual autonomy. He acts freely against the pressure of his mother and his social environment. It is a character, who does not hesitate to question, inquire, investigate, and to attempt. It has such features that children and youth can identify and emulate with him. It is thought that the book named The Little Black Fish as an artistic stimulus contributes to the development of individual autonomy of child and youth.

215-222

Authors: Kübra ÖRSDEMİR

Previous research claims that humans have cognitive bias when they process texts or utterances incrementally. They suggest that humans more easily infer causal and continuous relations rather than concessive or discontinuous discourse relations. This contrastive experimental study aims to further investigate this issue by comparing two different languages; English and Turkish. The 14 participants in this study were divided into two experimental groups. While one group was exposed to English-stimuli, the other experimental group was exposed to Turkish-stimuli. It was aimed for the participants to complete or continue the given discourse at the moment of reading. Through this procedure their active implicit processing was aimed to be measured. A pilot study was done prior to the treatment to validate the experimental items which was used in the study. The results of the study indicate that there was a higher preference towards causal or continuous connectives in processing upcoming discourse in both English and Turkish languages. It was also found that in relation to the Uniform Information Density Hypothesis, causal or continuous discourse connectives were expressed implicitly more frequently in comparison to concessive connectives in both English and Turkish languages.

234-241

Authors: Göksel POLAT & Gülcan ALICI

Rhetoric is the manner of expression of a thought and sensation clearly and fluidly. Classical rhetoric consists of the complete kadrosun fesâhat, me'ânî, beyân and bedi '. Fesâhat, the word is perfect, in terms of meaning and harmony. Beyân talks about the methods and the bases of expressing a meaning in different ways. Bedi speaks beliefs about the methods and beauties of expression.Meani which is the subdivision of rhetoric, is the science of the use of the word in its proper place and of the expression of the speaker’s or listener’s feelings. It also shows us the language’s changes which comes to real according to grammar. Meani has some subdivisions. These subdivisions are news’s imputation prose’s imputation and the situation of the verb in the sentence the sentence’s contributive elements, abbreviation, extension. It will be treid to examine the first and second couple of Nâilî’s poem which is called “hep redifli gazel” from the perspective of meani. First it will be tried to figure out speaker and listener. Second it will be explained that speaker how he explains his feelings. We will have determined whether the word is spoken, considering the readiness of the mind of the client. We will try to explain this finding based on the keywords and word groups in the text. Thus, we will have completed the examination of the limitations we have limited to two couplets in the framework of the scientific knowledge.

264-274

Authors: Ayşe Nur KUTLUCA CANBULAT

This study intended to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of Turkish Instruction SelfEfficacy Perception Scale (TISP) developed to identify classroom teacher candidates‟ perceptions of teacher self-efficacy in Turkish İnstruction. KMO values over 0.90 in the scale showed that dataset was suitable for factor analysis. It could be argued that the scales are reliable since the factor analysis conducted in the study pointed that the scale had three factor structure, TISP was very good in principal components analysis of the scale conducted in the framework of exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficients of three factors of TISP were in the range of 0.80≤ α <1.00. x2/sd, SRMR, RMR, NFI and CFI values corresponded to excellent fit in confirmatory factor analysis and in this context, three factor structure of TISP scale was confirmed.

285-303

Authors: Rana YILDIRIM & Esra YATAGANBABA

This paper reports on a study investigating code switching (CS henceforth) attempts of fifth grade EFL young learners in their interactive changes from English to Turkish in three classrooms in two different private schools. In accordance with this aim, three intermediate level EFL classes were recorded via a video camera, each for two class hours. The class recordings were transcribed and analysed to identify when learners attempted to switch codes; what types of CS took place; what functions these CSs embodied and if these CSs by learners were of any contributions to the learning environment. Face-to- face semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 students for triangulation purposes. The analyses revealed that students used CS while greeting, doing warm-up, using student’s book, checking homework, announcing exam results, reviewing homework and a grammar topic, playing games, practicing vocabulary and a new topic, working on notebook, doing worksheet activities, assigning homework and closing-up. The most frequently used type of CS was found to be inter-sentential CS. Moreover, students made use of CS mainly for meta-language, giving equivalence, asking for clarification, unofficial talks and translation. The analyses of interviews demonstrated that students regard CS as useful strategy for learning English. The study provided essential pedagogical implications regarding the use of native language and the need to encourage target language use in the language classrooms.

312-322

Authors: Burcu VAROL

This descriptive study is an attempt to understand if and how the spatial positioning of information in L1 is transferred to L2 contexts. The first aim was to discern any commonalities among the syntactic errors that learners commit and put them under certain categories. Next, the influence of the learners‟ first language (Turkish) was sought on their prevalent errors in the light of Bada‟s (1989) comparison of Turkish and English case system and prepositions. An analysis of errors with reference to Kırkgöz‟s (2010) categorization of addition, omission and misuse errors showed that the most common error type was misuse followed by omission errors. Results suggest the transfer of the mental organization of concepts from L1 to L2 (English) complying with the Conceptual Transfer Hypothesis of Jarvis (2007).

336-347

Authors: Yusuf SÜLÜKÇÜ

A review of the history of teaching Turkish as a second language indicated that foreigners published several books in Europe and İstanbul in the nineteenth century for the purpose of teaching Turkish. A majority of these books are focused on grammar. However, there were also books that included, at least partially, passages of prose and Turkish proverbs. In general, the books were printed using Latin letters, in consideration of the native language of the target group (e.g. English, French). The Turkish words or passages that were included as examples were initially written in original form using Arabic letters, then transcribed using Latin letters, and finally, their meanings were provided to the learners in the target language. Turkish Proverbs Translated into English, which was first printed in 1844, is different from all the books mentioned above. The Turkish proverbs in this book were written using Armenian letters only, and then English and German translations were also provided below the passages in Armenian. The books written in Turkish did not use Arabic letters. This study analyzed the English and German publications of Turkish Proverbs, which were printed in Venice in the nineteenth century, with regard to the Turkish passages and language characteristics. In addition, a general evaluation was made of the book. The study concluded that the books analyzed here were important, because they were printed using Armenian letters, and because of the characters that were used to demonstrate the sounds in Turkish pronunciation. Also, the books are important because of the language characteristics, and because they include certain proverbs which are not in print today.

374-400

Authors: Ceylan YILDIRIM

Considering the contribution of a work to cultural interaction by its being translated into other languages, the importance of polysystem theory is revealed by its focus on the relationship among translationliterature and culture. Through the translations, different Nations’ literatures interact and this interaction through its reflection to the culture contributes to intercultural interaction. Even-Zohar, emphasizes by his theory the role of the literature in social change and transformation as changes and transformations in literature realized by translations play a huge role in the shaping of national cultures. The aim of this study is to reveal the impact of translations on a nation's literature, more specifically the impact of Maalouf’s translations on the Turkish literature and also examine the impact of translation strategies on the author’s reception in Turkish literature. What are the reasons for the author’s being cited with Turkish local authors by obtaining a wide circulation in our literature? How did the adopted translation methods and strategies influence the author’s popularity and also his reception as a local actor in our literature? In this study, Newmark’s major translation methods for the translations of the cultural elements will be used and FrenchTurkish translation examples will be studied within the framework of Venuti’s ‘Domestication’ and ‘Foreignization’ strategies. The dominance of Domestication strategy, which takes into consideration the target language and cultural norms, in Maalouf’s Turkish translations, influenced the place and the role of the author in our literature. So that, behind the Maalouf’s popularity and the impression that he is seen as a local author, the impact of translation strategies is great. It is possible to say that Maalouf contributed to the shaping of the Turkish literary polysystem by supporting the examples of postmodern historical novel with his translations.

416-439

Authors: Somaiyeh Mahmoudi & Reza Barzegar

This article reports a study investigating the existence of any statistically significant correlation between self-efficacy and L2 learner’s writing proficiency. Initially, the participants were 100 female L2 learners at Islamic Azad university of Damavand in Iran, but only 78 of them provided valid data. The participants completed self-efficacy questionnaires and received two topics in order to write two essays, one of which was on an informative topic and the other on a comparative topic. Two rubrics, one for writing to inform and the other for writing to compare and contrast, were used to evaluating the learners’ skill in those writing tasks. In addition, there were self-efficacy questionnaires. Then the data were submitted to statistical analyses. Based on the Pearson correlation, we found that there was a significant correlation between self-efficacy and L2 learners’ informative and comparative writing; moreover, regression analyses revealed self-efficacy can be used as a predictor of L2 learners’ writing proficiency. The findings of the study have implications for L2 teaching and assessment.