Cross-linguistic effects in the use of suggestion formulas by L2 Turkish learners
This study investigates the use of suggestions in second language (L2) Turkish produced by first language English speakers. The data were collected via a discourse completion task and essays in the form of a letter to a friend. Participants were 15 advanced L2 Turkish learners and 30 native Turkish speakers. The findings show that suggestions made by L2 participants in both tasks differed considerably from the way these were used by native speakers in terms of sensitivity to social context: the L2 learners were found to be less sensitive to social context than native speakers. Native-nonnative differences in the choice and use of suggestion strategies indicate a particular difficulty associated with the acquisition of speech acts even for high-proficiency learners.