Abstract:

The current study explores EFL learners' productive affix knowledge in various essay types. More specifically, the study investigates whether the essay types differentiate from each other with regard to the production of words that have no affixes, inflected words, and derived words included in the first and second 1,000 word frequency bands. It further examines both the most frequent affixes and the distribution of affixes mentioned in Bauer and Nation’s framework (1993) across essay types. A group of datasets for each of four different essay types have been formed. In each of these datasets, firstly, the distribution of words across the first 1,000 and second 1,000 word frequency bands was investigated. Secondly, both basewords and affixed words are analyzed in each of those two word frequency bands. Thirdly, the distribution of affixes across Bauer and Nation’s framework (1993) is investigated. Lastly, the most frequent affixes in each of the datasets are explored. The findings reveal that the essay type plays a partly active role in the use of words included in different word frequency bands. Additionally, as the word frequency band decreases, the number of affixed words increases. Also, affix types mentioned in Bauer and Nation's framework (1993) do not reflect the level of difficulty according to the findings obtained from the existing datasets.

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