Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the competence level of tertiary level Turkish EFL students in terms of using complex prepositions in their expository argumentative essays. Yet, another aim is to find out the extent of which they are successful in using these prepositions in their argumentative essays. Local learner corpus KTUCLE (Karadeniz Technical University Corpus of Learner English) data was used in this study in order to investigate the preposition use and the findings were compared with the findings of a native corpus LOCNESS (The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays) in an attempt to contrast the usages and reveal overuse and underuse patterns in both corpora. This comparative interlanguage analysis of complex prepositions existing in the range of the corpus data mainly searched for overused and underused or misused prepositions. Prepositions in the semantic field of “reference” and “aboutness” in native English presented different colligational and collocational contexts and environments but the degree of this variety is further enhanced in learner corpora used in the study. Findings also suggested that overuse and underuse patterns of the prepositions in the scope of the study presented various levels of divergence when compared with the native corpus. Implications of this for English language teaching were also added to the end of the study.

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