An exploratory study of the progressive ‘–ing’ in a Turkish academic context from an ELF perspective

Abstract

In SLA literature every nonstandard use of L2 learners is counted as an ‘error’ causing distraction to communication. Explanations for these errors range from crosslinguistic influence between L1 and L2 to target language input in foreign language classrooms. But, such a monolingual orientation of SLA which takes standard language as the norm against which learners are measured does not comply with the multilingual reality of today’s communities. If the acquisition of English, which acts as a lingua franca (ELF), is in question, this view can be strongly confirmed. There are more nonnative English speakers than native speakers and English is used more between nonnatives, so a fresh outlook on how L2 speakers make use of English language in interaction is needed. This research, as one of the ELF-based studies, investigated the progressive use by the L1 Turkish preservice teachers of English in an English-medium academic context. Individual and group speeches of seventy-three participants and their interactions in a speaking course were videorecorded. The analysis of this spoken data showed that in 88 % of all obligatory contexts the participants used the progressive, which suggests that they know the semantics of this construction and mostly use it accordingly. But, when all progressive uses were examined; there appeared, apart from 75 % standard uses, 25 % nonstandard contexts of the progressive in which it was extended to states, habits and points in time. Therefore, there was also a focus in this study on possible reasons of such a characteristic progressive use in L2 English.