A corpus-based study of rhetorical patterns in Turkish university students’ argumentative essays.

Çoban, Mustafa and Sahan, Ozgur (2015) A corpus-based study of rhetorical patterns in Turkish university students’ argumentative essays. 18th Warwick International Postgraduate Conference in Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick , Warwick, United Kingdom. 23 - 25 Jun 2015.

Abstract

The study focuses on whether Turkish university students have similar or different writing preferences in their L1 and L2 argumentative essays. The question how much knowledge of academic writing a Turkish university student really has before entering the English preparatory program triggered this research. To answer that question in more detail a corpus-based study was conducted. Before starting their academic writing courses, students were asked to write a Turkish essay with similar prompts to the TOEFL TWE exam. The same group of students was asked to write similar English essays based on TOEFL TWE after receiving English writing instruction. Those essays were compiled into corpus software WORDSMITH 5.0 and analyzed for conventions valued in Turkish and then in English academic essays: overall organization, rhetorical, coherence,
transition, placement of main ideas etc. Participants were also given a background questionnaire for eliciting their earlier L1 and L2 writing instruction and selected participants were given stimulated recall interviews. The data was analyzed and patterns were identified then compared with general academic Turkish and English essay conventions. The findings are crucial that they will the basis of information on where and how to begin when planning English writing instruction at a state university English prep school program in Turkey.

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Contributors

Author: Ozgur Sahan

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