ACCUSATIVE CASE AS BOTH “CAUSE” AND “SOLUTION” FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING PLATEAU IN TFL

YABANCI DİL OLARAK TÜRKÇE ÖĞRENİMİNDE PLATOETKİSİNİN SEBEBİ VE ÇÖZÜMÜ: BELİRTME HALİ

Özet

Bu makale Crosscheck sistemi tarafından taranmış ve bu sistem sonuçlarına göre orijinal bir makale olduğu tespit edilmiştir. ** Yrd. Doç. Dr. Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, El-mek: [email protected] *** Okt. İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi, El-mek: [email protected]

Abstract

This study explains why accusative case has been chosen and how it could be used as a strategy to overcome language-learning plateau (Yin, n.d.; Richards, 2008) where the learners of Turkish as a foreign language (TFL) hit at B1-threshold level mostly. Here, the students who learn TFL through English have problems in the learning process, because they tend to misuse accusative case in terms of the accordance with the verbs while constructing sentences. Thus, in order to give the students systematic orientation about the usage of Turkish accusative case, it is necessary to mediate the connection with the other components of a sentence through contextuality, expression of definiteness and transitivity. Based on this background, action research (Patton, 2002; Johnson, 2002; Creswell, 2012; Mertler, 2012) was conducted to solve the specific problem of correct using accusative case within TFL courses. Semi-structured interviews, quiz, course notes were collected as data instruments from both students and instructor in two semesters. Data were analyzed inductively and common difficulties and mistakes were determined to develop a kind of solution to cope with language-learning plateau. Consequently, the students’ attention was drawn to the internalization of the concepts within real life situations, and then a verb list was prepared to help them to figure out the semantic and pragmatic functionality of the accusative cases with the usages of the verbs. Moreover, the strategy of verbalizing (Galperin, 1992 as cited in Negueruela & Lantolf, 2006; Williams et al. 2013) the accusative cases with the usages of verbs was given as a solution for the language-learning plateau The notion that integrating grammar into language skills rather than a product as an instructional process is fundamental to foreign language instruction is very familiar to all of us. So, how to teach grammar and to what extent to teach are still kept in agenda of discussions over teaching foreign language. Learning a foreign language, which belongs to a totally different language family, is desperately in demand of analysis of linguistic structure, and perceiving the mentality of target language. Since Modern Turkish is an agglutinative language, which is composed of consecutive suffixes with regard to vocal/consonant alternations. E.g. evimizdekiler = ev-imiz-de-ki-ler (the ones who are at our home). It is required to do instruction in the logic of suffix alignment in a way of deriving or forming words, and the classification of sentence structures according to structure, predicate, meaning and word order. Herein, our objective is to make students understand how suffixes function and their relations to other words in a sentence. In order to make a sentence not only grammatically, but also meaningfully correct, suffixes should be appropriately attached to words. It is crucially important to know exact suffix combinations for referring the right concepts and entities at the right place in the right time (Sağır, 2002, p. 44). Furthermore, teaching the components of a sentence in terms of functionality and appropriate utterances would be more meaningful for adult learners, and this would lead them to raise their awareness in grammar structures. Yet adult learners like to make comparisons and connections between languages. Subsequently, they are eager to use their productive skills such as in writing assignments full of complex sentences. For instance, at first sight, the object clause difference between these two sentences could be easily guessed via suffixes in Turkish: 1. She promised her husband to cook: “Kocasına yemek yapmaya söz verdi”. 2. She convinced her husband to cook: “Kocasını yemek yapmaya ikna etti”. But which argument structure of the verb that determines the type of suffix can be confusing for foreign language learners. Purpose This study explains why accusative case has been chosen and how it could be used as a strategy to overcome language-learning plateau (Yin, n.d.; Richards, 2008) where the learners of Turkish as a foreign language (TFL) hit at B1-threshold level mostly. Here, the students who learn TFL through English have problems in the learning process, because they tend to misuse accusative case in terms of the accordance with the verbs while constructing sentences. We observed the learners who are in the transition phase of moving to B2 level cannot use accusative cases precisely in a sentence even though they know the rules of thumb of accusative case suffixes. This prevents them to speak and write accurately because they do not comprehend how accusative cases function within the context of verbs. So, this factor causes them to lose their motivation which is required for developing linguistic competence Thus, we claim that “learning accusative cases within the context of the verbs" would provide a strategy to overcome the languagelearning plateau at B1 level for TFL. In other words, we studied how suffixation of accusative cases could be accorded with some certain verbs and this could be taught more effectively in order to overcome language-learning plateau. Moreover, in order to give more clear systematic orientations about the usage of Turkish accusative case, we classified the general functions and implementations of Turkish accusative cases, which are presented in some main reference books on TFL as “contextuality, expression of definiteness and transitivity.” Methodology Participants The participants were 15 foreign students aged 16 to 32 attending a state university TÖMER Turkish course. The Turkish course lasted for two terms of 2013-2014 academic year and they had 4-houred classes for 5 days in a week. With the second term, prominently, they had overall review of A2 level and then moved to B1 level. Throughout these two terms, the participants studied the course-books Gazi Tömer Yabancılar için Türkçe; A1 Temel Düzey and A2 Temel Düzey (Gazi TÖMER, 2013). Data collection Four different instrumen