This study aims to focus on extracting and analyzing impoliteness in corpora in British English and Turkish retrieved from two different corpora British National Corpus (BNC) and Spoken Turkish Corpus (STC), which is under construction. It focuses on conversation as genre in spoken interaction and discusses issues related to impoliteness in a corpus driven linguistics (CDL) approach. It proposes two levels / extraction and analysis. Within the CDL framework, the theory or model of impoliteness behind the analysis will be forced by the findings gathered from the extraction of impoliteness. At the extraction level, among the spoken texts in both in BNC and the databases of STC, for the purposes of this study, dialogues that include a conflict or an offending event will be selected. In order to select such dialogues, various methods will be applied. First, spoken texts will be scanned through an initial word query, collocation query, question sentences and tags query, query for imperatives and possible queries that allow for searching for prosodic nuances, as well as interruptions and overlaps to the extent the corpora and the focus of the study allow. Second, metapragmatics comments, conventionalized impoliteness formulae, cues for non-conventionalized implicational impoliteness,conversational patterns, and other cues such as semantic prosody coming into play in the co-text and context are taken into consideration. Once the selection is completed, the insights gathered from the extracted instances of impoliteness will be applied to analyze the data. Impoliteness in both languages will be examined in regards to how impoliteness is triggered, how the progression of impolite exchanges takes place, and how those instances of impoliteness are resolved. Other considerations such as context-determined impoliteness, intentionality of the speaker, and perception of the hearer will be discussed.

Coherence in written discourse has been a problematic concept for many English Language Teachers when teaching to write in English. It is considered as a crucial part of academic written discourse, which students are expected to master to be able to pursue their academic studies. This study aims to examine how much the coherence-related difficulties/problems of Turkish EFL students in writing English essays are related to writing Turkish essays. The subjects for this study were chosen from the upper-intermediate level students at the Preparatory Program of Istanbul Bilgi University. For a detailed understanding of the nature of the coherence-related difficulties/problems of students&rsquo / Turkish and English essays, this study suggests a pragmatic analysis, involving the use of Grice&rsquo / s Cooperative Principle and maxims and sub-maxims of Cooperation. This study was conducted in the middle of 2005-2006 Academic Year with the participation of 20 students who were chosen randomly. Each student was asked to write an essay in English on a given topic from their weekly program. Threeweeks later, the same students were asked to write essays on the same topic in Turkish. Thus, 20 English essays and 20 Turkish essays (i.e., Total 40 essays) were collected as data for this study. The essays were rated for coherence by three different raters. All English essays were analyzed by one monolingual Americanrater and one bilingual (Turkish and English) rater. Similarly, all Turkish essays were analyzed by one monolingual Turkish rater and the same bilingual (Turkish and English) rater. The coherence ratings showed that there is a positive significant correlation between the coherence judgments of monolingual raters and the bilingual rater, which means that both monolingual raters and the bilingual rater agree on the similar coherence judgments. Next, the essays were analyzed in light of the Gricean Maxims to find the violations of each maxim in each essay by the researcher. In the comparison of maxim violations and the coherence judgments of the raters, the maxim of Relation was found to be the most significant maxim that affected the coherence judgments of the raters both for Turkish and English essays. In addition, Manner maxim was significant for Turkish essays and Quantity maxim was significant for English essays. However, in the comparison of the violation of individual maxims in Turkish and English essays, the violation of Relation maxim in English essays was found to correlate with the violation of Relation, Quality and Quantity maxims in Turkish essays. Similarly, violation of Manner maxim in English essays was also found to correlate with the violation of Quantity and Relation maxims. On the other hand, the violation of Manner maxim in Turkish essays was found to correlate with the violation of Quantity maxim in English essays. In conclusion, by looking at these relationships between Turkish essays and English essays, it may be argued that students may have inadequacies in writing skills or may lack some writing skills in Turkish, which may cause inadequacies in English academic writing skills. However, this study suggests the same study be replicated in different contexts and with larger sample sizes, similar research studies be conducted in Turkish writing instruction in the contexts of Turkish Secondary Education, and further studies be conducted on the effect of Relation and Manner maxims on other maxims.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent of instructors at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Department of Foreign Languages regard in-service training programs crucial for their professional development. Another aspect of the study was to identify the professional needs of the instructors teaching preparatory classes as well as to determine the preferred instructional methods of an INSET program. The final aim of the study was to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between novice and experienced instructors regarding their needs and expectation of an in-service training program.The study was conducted among thirty-nine instructors who are teaching preparatory classes at TOBB ETU, DFL. The chairperson of the DFL also took part in the study. Data from the 39 instructors were collected through questionnaires which were developed to uncover the opinions of instructors in terms of the characteristics of effective in-service training programs, to identify the needs of the instructors and determine the instructional methods preferred in-service training program. The questionnaires included both Likert scale and open-ended items. Moreover, 50-minute lessons of 10 instructors were video recorded. Video recordings aimed to identify the needs of the instructors that should be addressed through an in-service training program. Finally, interviews were conducted with 10 instructors whose classes were video recorded. The aim of the interviews was to enable the instructors to reflect on the findings of the questionnaires and the video recordings. Another interview was conducted with the chairperson of the DFL to uncover to what extent his perceptions about in-service training activities correlate with those of the instructors. Data collected through the instruments were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Close-ended items were analyzed via the SPSS program and mean scores for each item were calculated besides an independent sample t-test. The qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instructors believe INSET is crucial for their professional development, they would like to keep on track with new developments in the field of ELT and participate in seminars and conferences as part of INSET programs. In terms of the professional needs, it was found that instrcutors need to be trained on teaching speaking skills and pronunciation, written and oral correction, promoting student autonomy, dealing with classroom management problems, teaching mixed-ability groups, raising language awareness of students and reflecting on their own experience. The t-test results demonstrated that there was a statistical significance between the answers of novice and experienced instructors concerning being trained in &lsquo / teaching vocabulary,&rsquo / &lsquo / teaching grammar&rsquo / and &lsquo / improving in written and oral correction strategies.&rsquo / It was found that experienced teachers are particularly interested in training sessions on teaching grammar, teaching vocabulary, and improving written and oral correction strategies. As a result of the findings, an ongoing INSET program model was proposed for the Department of Foreign Languages at TOBB ETU.

Most of Peter Ackroyd&rsquo / s work takes place in London, and the city can be said to be a unifying element in his work. Even those of his novels that do not use London as a setting are about London and Londoners, in history and in the present. London, in Ackroyd&rsquo / s work, is represented by multiple points of view &ndash / firstly that of a historical personage and secondly of a researcher in the present day. Through the use of such a structure, Ackroyd parodies biography writing (by rewriting and distorting the life of a historical Londoner), and detective fiction (by making the contemporary researcher ineffectual and underqualified). These narratives, while being clearly separate and linear in themselves, focus on London, which acts as a bridge between the characters and themes in the separate centuries, culminating in their merge at the end. Thus, methods of rewriting in Ackroyd&rsquo / s work come together in the ulterior aim of rewriting the city of London. The main aim of this dissertation is to account for the various types of rewriting and parody that becomes evident in Ackroyd&rsquo / s fiction. In the light of the discussions on parody of detective fiction and biography in each chapter, this dissertation will attempt to view Ackroyd&rsquo / s fiction as a chronological metamorphosis of London itself, through rewriting its artists and their texts as productions of London.

The purpose of this study is to investigate disfluency and gesture in the second language under specific conditions such as familiarity vs. non-familiarity, concrete topic type vs. abstract topic type and speaking with native speaker vs. speaker with non-native speaker. The sample of this study was sixteen students from the Department of Basic English in Middle East Technical University (DBE), three instructors from DBE and one instructor from Modern Language Department in Middle East Technical University. Two of the instructors are native and the rest of them are non-native speakers of English. With an assigned instructor each student spoke on the following topics: making spaghetti, giving directions, spring festival and clashing midterms, and effects of religion on our life. The conversations on each topic were recorded audio-visually. Then the audio-visual data was annotated in terms of linguistic and gestural elements. In order to explore the relation among disfluency, gesture and controlled variables, quantitative data analysis methods were used. Levelt&rsquo / s speech production and Krauss&rsquo / s gesture production model were used as a basic framework. Dual Coding theory and Metalinguistic Awareness Theory was used to explain intricate results of the present study. As a result of the study, it was found that in the concrete topic condition, learners speak more fluently because of time and topic effects. Similarly, in the condition of familiar addressee and native speaker, learners speak more fluently than they do when speaking with a non-familiar or a non- native speaker.

This M.A. thesis investigates the L2 acquisition of binding properties of English reflexives by Turkish L2 learners to address the issue of UG availability in L2 grammar. 140 Turkish L2 learners of English (67 elementary, 73 upper) participated in this study. They were all students at the Department of Basic English, Middle East Technical University. In addition, in the control group, there were 8 native speakers of English. A grammaticality judgment task and a story-based truth-value judgment task were used to examine whether the L2 grammars of the Turkish learners of English are governed by the principles and parameters of UG in the context of reflexive binding. According to the Full Transfer Full Access Model (FTFA), L2 learners have direct access to innate principles and parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) from the initial state to the end-state in the process of L2 acquisition. In line with FTFA, the results of the two tests suggest that the L2 learners&rsquo / grammar is UG-constrained even though they do not fully converge on native English norms with respect to reflexive binding.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of Anglicisms in the language of Ukrainian young adults, the motives of English borrowings&rsquo / usage, and the attitude of young people towards the presence of Anglicisms in the Ukrainian language. The study examined the language of young adults, newspapers and magazines, and popular TV programmes. Note fields, audio-recordings, and questionnaire were chosen for investigation of borrowings integrated in the Ukrainian language. The study revealed a constant usage of Anglicisms by young adults in Ukraine, despite their place of residence and occupation, focusing on the main areas where borrowings are used. It was suggested that English borrowings have become a significant part of the language used by young people in Ukraine.

This study aimed at discovering the role of lexical cohesive links in L2 reading comprehension. For this purpose, the researcher carried out lexical cohesion analysis of two TOEFL reading tests consisting of six texts. First, prior to the reading comprehension tests, the students were administered &ldquo / a vocabulary familiarity task&rdquo / . Second, the TOEFL reading tests were administered to fifty upper-intermediate and advanced level EFL students at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Third, after each test, a post-reading &ldquo / Lexical links recognition task&rdquo / was given. Finally, the data were analyzed comparing reader performance on each item, both within and across the groups. The researcher analyzed the reading test results besides the results of the accompanying lexical cohesive links tasks to see if there is a &ldquo / significant relationship&rdquo / between the three factors: vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension level and recognition of lexical cohesive links. The results have indicated that awareness of lexical cohesive links noticeably contributes to reading test scores in L2 and that recognition-level vocabulary knowledge alone may not guarantee better reading comprehension scores. Finally, it is suggested that reading and writing teachers can develop some pedagogic exercises to teach lexical cohesive devices and in this way improve students&rsquo / knowledge of lexical cohesive sub-types, thus enhancing their reading performance.

This thesis investigates future English teachers&rsquo / experiences of learning English proverbs in Anatolian Teacher Training High Schools (ATTHS) in Turkey. In order to reveal the situation about proverb teaching in English language classrooms in ATTHS, students&rsquo / opinions are sought and coursebooks are analysed. In doing this, this study aims to find out EFL teacher trainees&rsquo / attitudes towards learning and teaching English proverbs, their conceptualization of proverbs, their thoughts about their knowledge and use of English proverbs, and perceptions about how sufficiently their English teachers and coursebooks at high school taught them English proverbs. This study also aims to uncover how the English coursebooks they used in ATTHS teach proverbs. To achieve these aims, a questionnaire is administered to 187 freshman ELT students / a semi-structured interview is conducted with volunteers and the coursebooks used by the majority are examined using an analysis form and a checklist. As a result, it is found that those teacher trainees have positive attitudes towards learning and teaching English proverbs, think that they do not have enough knowledge of English proverbs and that their English teachers and coursebooks did not teach proverbs sufficiently. Moreover, the participants&rsquo / conceptualization of proverbs reflects traditional definitions. Besides, coursebook analysis reveals that while the examined local coursebooks contain almost no proverbs at all, the analysed international coursebooks include a relatively bigger number of proverbs. However, except for some of the semantic and cultural aspects of proverbs, there is hardly any explicit reference to other aspects of proverbs in all the coursebooks examined.

Discourse connectives signal discourse coherence by making discourse relations explicit and by playing a role in the organization and structure of information in discourse. Therefore, their use in L2 writing is an important field of study that is likely to have implications for discourse competence both at the sentence-level discourse and at the level of larger discourse structure. The aim of the present study is to account for the use of three contrastive discourse connectives, but, however and although at both the microstructural and the macrostructural levels of discourse in the argumentative essays written by Turkish learners of English and native speakers of American English. The patterns of use by L2 learners are compared with those of native speakers. The analysis is based on 120 essays from two corpora: Turkish subcorpus of the International Corpus of Learner English (TICLE) and American subcorpus of Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (ALOCNESS). The study reveals that the argumentative essays of Turkish learners of English and American students do not differ significantly regarding the three connectives neither structurally nor semantically. However, at the macrostructural level of discourse, differences concerning the pattern of argumentation and the role that the connectives play in the claim-counterargument-refutation pattern of organization were observed. Further analysis on other lexical items used in argumentation shows that in ALOCNESS, there is more reliance on other means, such as the lexical items expressing modality and those signaling the argumentative nature of the text.