Morpho-Syntactic Developmental Features of Syrian Primary School Students Learning Turkish as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Choosing and structuring a word, making a statement, and comprehending the formulated statement require complex principles and processes. Within this context, complicated procedures and processes might be faced in the second language learning as well. Learning a second language means grasping the syntactic principles of a language and transforming these principles into language skills. In our very specific study, ten Syrian primary school students coming from diverse psychological and sociological backgrounds, and being at varying ages were investigated. The participants were asked to narrate the pictured book Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer in Turkish language and the narrations were audio-taped by the researchers. Based on a descriptive research design, the data were collected and analysed qualitatively. As a result of this study which investigated the morpho-syntactic developmental features of Syrian primary school students, diverse and common morpho-syntactic features were detected among students coming from different backgrounds.