Browsing by Subject "Formulaic language"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Open Access
Adult learners' retention of collocations from exposure
(Sage Publications Ltd., 2010) Durrant, P.; Schmitt, N.
Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim that adult second language learners take an essentially non-formulaic approach to language learning, analysing their input into individual words and not retaining information about what words appear together. If the second model is right, it represents a crucial difference between child first and adult second language learning. This 'non-formulaic' model is tested here through a lab-based study of collocation learning. Our findings indicate that, contrary to the model, adult second language learners do retain information about what words appear together in their input. This suggests that any shortfall in non-natives' knowledge of collocational associations between words is due to inadequate input, rather than a non-nativelike approach to learning. The study also examines the effects of different forms of repetition on collocation acquisition and draws conclusions regarding pedagogical activities for learning.
Open Access
The effect of L1 on the production of L2 formulaic expressions
(Turkish Association of Applied Linguistics, 2016) Pfeiffer, K.; Ortaçtepe, D.; Corlu, S.
This study explores whether formulaic expressions congruent to the ones in an individual's native language (L1) have an effect on the production those expressions and their respective contexts in that individual's second language (L2). Fifteen EFL students were given a pre- and post-Discourse Completion Test and a Writing Prompt to assess their improvement in producing English idioms and their contexts after a workshop that focused on idioms of varying similarity to the participants' L1: Category I, word-for-word translations of the idiom used in L1; Category II, conceptually similar versions of the idiom used in L1; and Category III, idioms specific to the L2. The results of the study suggest that explicit instruction and comparison of any category of idioms can promote its production, but also that EFL learners are more comfortable working with Category II idioms.
Open Access
EFL learners’ use of formulaic language in oral assessments: a study on fluency and proficiency
(Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dekanlığı, 2016) Üstünbaş, Ü.; Ortaçtepe, Deniz
Despite the recent, increasing interest in the research of formulaic language which constitutes a significant part of languages, there is little research on formulaic language use in registers such as classroom teaching and textbooks. Therefore, this article aims to investigate a) formulaic language use of EFL learners in multi-task oral proficiency exams consisting of an individual and a paired task, b) the task type in which these learners use more formulaic language, and c) whether the use of formulaic expressions is related to their fluency and overall proficiency scores. The data were gathered from the content analyses of video recordings of oral proficiency exam belonging to 190 EFL learners with different proficiency levels according to the description of CEFR and the course book used at School of Foreign Languages at a state university in Turkey. The findings indicate that EFL learners used formulaic language which they were exposed to through their course books in oral proficiency exams with different tasks; they used more formulaic language in the paired tasks in which they interact with another exam taker and their use was significantly related to their scores of fluency and language proficiency.
Open Access
Formulaic language and conceptual socialization: the route to becoming nativelike in L2
(Elsevier, 2013-10) Ortaçtepe, D.
The present study addressed the question whether formulaic expressions indicate nativelike selection in the target language by examining seven Turkish students’ use of formulaic expressions during their first year in the United States. Fourteen external raters who spoke English as their first language rated the Turkish (focal group) and American students’ (control group) DCT responses in terms of nativelike language use. The results indicated that the American students not only received higher nativelikeness ratings but also produced more formulaic expressions than the Turkish students. This finding confirms that freely generated utterances based on grammatical units and lexis forecast non-membership to the speech community (Skehan, 1998) while the use of formulaic expressions is an indicator of nativelike selection. The results also revealed that gaining competency over formulaic expressions for second language learners is not a linear process but open to creativity.
Open Access
Formulaicity in an agglutinating language: the case of Turkish
(De Gruyter Mouton, 2013) Durrant, P.
This study examines the extent to which complex inflectional patterns found in Turkish, a language with a rich agglutinating morphology, can be described as formulaic. It is found that many prototypically formulaic phenomena previously attested at the multi-word level in English - frequent co-occurrence of specific elements, fixed 'bundles' of elements, and associations between lexis and grammar - also play an important role at the morphological level in Turkish. It is argued that current psycholinguistic models of agglutinative morphology need to be complexified to incorporate such patterns. Conclusions are also drawn for the practice of Turkish as a Foreign Language teaching and for the methodology of Turkish corpus linguistics.
Open Access
A function-first approach to identifying formulaic language in academic writing
(2011) Durrant, P.; Mathews-Aydınlı, J.
There is currently much interest in creating pedagogically-oriented descriptions of formulaic language. Research in this area has typically taken what we call a 'form-first' approach, in which formulas are identified as the most frequent recurrent forms in a relevant corpus. While this research continues to yield valuable results, the present paper argues that much can also be gained by taking a 'function-first' approach, in which a corpus is first annotated for communicative functions and formulas are then identified as the recurrent patterns associated with each function. We demonstrate this approach through a comparative analysis of introductions to student essays and research articles. Focusing on one particularly common communicative function, the analysis demonstrates that (1) this function is more common in student essays than in articles; (2) both the choice to use the function and the choice of linguistic forms that realize the function vary across subject areas in research articles, but not in student essays; (3) research articles tend to be more formulaic in expressing the function than student essays; and (4) some parts of the forms used are highly formulaic, while others are more open. The key formulas are described and suggestions made regarding their pedagogical presentation.
Open Access
The use of formulaic language in Asian and European elf contexts: a Corpus based study
(2017-11) Bostancı, Tuğba
This study aimed to examine the lexicogrammatical features of ELF spoken in two different contexts, namely Europe and Asia. More specifically, the study investigated the use of formulaic language in Asian and European ELF interactions by gathering data from two ELF corpora; the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and Asian Corpus of English (ACE). Selecting conversations from both academic and social domains, a subset of data comprising around 160.000 words was created. Kecskes‘ (2007) formulaic continuum was used as an analytical framework to determine the high-frequency and low frequency formulaic expressions in academic and social ELF interactions in both ELF contexts. The formulaic expressions occurring in the dataset were recorded in six categories; grammatical units, fixed and semi-fixed semantic units, phrasal verbs, speech formulas, situation-bound utterances, and idioms. Employing tokenization and frequency analysis, frequency of occurrence of each type of formulaic language as well as individual expressions within each category was identified paying close attention to the non-standard forms as well. Data were analyzed descriptively to identify similarities and differences in the frequency of formulaic language in Asian and European ELF interactions. The findings revealed that, European ELF was slightly more formulaic than Asian ELF overall. Furthermore, social ELF interactions were found to be a little more formulaic than academic interactions in both ELF contexts. Among the six categories of formulaic language, speech formulas and fixed and semi-fixed semantic units were found to be the most frequent groups while situation-bound utterances and idioms were used least frequently in both Asian and European ELF irrespective of the speech domain. As for the non-standard forms of formulaic expressions, they were found to be slightly more frequent in Asian ELF than in European ELF. Among the most common sources of such unconventional forms were problems with the use of copula 'be‘, and the third person present tense marker '-s‘, use of lexis, overuse or omission of prepositions, article use and pluralization. Concerning the results above, the study implied that the lexicogrammatical features of English as a lingua franca, from a formulaic language perspective, showed a great degree of similarity in Asian and European contexts. The study also implied that the teaching of speech formulas and semantic units must be prioritized as those were used more often than the other types of formulaic language in intercultural communication.