International Journal of Language Academy E-ISSN: 2342-0251 DOI Number: http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/ijla.41461 Research Article Volume 8/1 March 2020 p. 85/96 International Journal of Language Academy Volume 8/1 March 2020 p. 85/96 VERBS AND THEIR PATTERNS IN ACADEMIC WRITINGS OF TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE 1 Yabancı Dil Olarak İngilizce Öğrenen Türk Öğrencilerin Akademik Metinlerindeki Eylemler ve Örüntüleri Fatih Ünal BOZDAĞ 2 Hatice SOFU 3 Abstract This paper investigates the interlanguage features of Turkish EFL learners in academic written discourse; particularly patterning of lexical verbs of Academic Keyword List (AKL) (Paqout, 2010) by Turkish EFL learners. AKL covers the non-domain specific words which entitle the characteristics of academic texts and outline the basic academic sketch. It is assumed that the level of acquisition of these words that are defined under four basic lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives) will reveal the students’ lexical repertoires of academic vocabularies as well as interpreting lexico- grammatical attributes specific to writers. The scope of this study includes conducting a corpus-based analysis of verbs of AKL. For this corpus-based study, at the first level, comparison of TICLE (Turkish sub-corpus of International Corpus of Learner English) and the LOCNESS (The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays) corpus was utilized to define general lexical profile of the learners by preparing frequency-based list according to usage levels of the verbs in two corpora. At the second level, a detailed analysis of 10 verbs with the highest frequency was conducted within the frame of the Pattern Grammar approach. Results indicate the overuse of some specific words by non-native students while some others are underused in comparison to native speakers of English. This investigation revealed the levels of students’ implicit knowledge of these particular lexical items, their awareness of register of academic verbs and to what extent they can put in use these items within the frame of functional lexico-grammatical usage. Keywords: Interlanguage, academic keyword list, lexico-grammar, learner corpora 1 This study is partial and modified version of previously published as a master thesis titled “Lexi cal Verbs in Academic Writings of Turkish Learners of English as A Second Language: A Corpus Based Study” under the supervision of Prof. Dr Hatice Sofu in 2014, at Çukurova University, Turkey. 2 Dr., Osmaniye Korkut Ata Üniversitesi, Yabancı Diller Yüksekokulu, fatihbozdag@korkutata.edu.tr 3 Prof. Dr., Çukurova Üniversitesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, hasofu@cu.edu.tr Article History: Received 23/01/2020 Accepted 09/02/2020 Available online 15/03/2020