The investigation of semantic prosodic awareness levels of Turkish ELL students through near-synonym words

Abstract

Near-synonyms are semantically similar words, but they cannot always be used interchangeably because of their collocational and semantic behaviours. The experience of tertiary level Turkish ELL students as EFL learners in terms of semantic prosody and their use of collocations and near-synonyms attract utmost attention in that these learners are largely concerned with improving their language proficiencies. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the level of semantic prosodic awareness of tertiary level Turkish ELL students, the correlation between their semantic prosodic awareness and English proficiency levels, the ways they use semantic prosody in their speech and written productions and how they cope with challenges about semantic prosody and the factors affecting their semantic prosodic knowledge and awareness. The data collected from the learners were analysed quantitively and qualitatively. A proficiency test, a semantic prosody test, an open-ended questionnaire and a structured interview were applied to the participants, respectively. The findings revealed that the learners' semantic prosodic knowledge is correlated with their language proficiency levels in direct proportion. Yet, learners presented insufficient knowledge and awareness of semantic prosody. Based on the findings of the current study, it could be tentatively suggested that learners in EFL classrooms should be introduced to the prosodic nature of word combinations. More precisely, EFL teachers should help their learners develop awareness regarding how particular words in the language as provided in this study convey meaning within their context. It is believed that this method would positively affect the learning process of EFL learners, and they would be able to create semantically more natural sentences as native speakers do.