On Formulaic Sequences And Their Use In CET4 Writing

Formulaic language is ubiquitous both in spoken and written discourses. The research on formulaic language can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. Now more and more researchers have realized the importance of formulaic language and propose to regard it as the ideal unit in teaching a foreign language, for formulaic language can be perceived as the form/function composite. In order to differ our research from others', we use the notion of formulaic sequences to generalize the formulaicity of certain language forms. Theoretically, the selection and use of formulaic sequences belong to one's pragmatic competence and play an important role in pragmatic competence. Functionally, any formulaic sequence is indispensable to a particular function. The present paper begins with a brief description of the nature of formulaic sequences, and then proceeds to talk about the definition and formal classification of formulaic sequences, and their functions respectively. This paper is focused on the organizing functions of two kinds of formulaic sequences: sentence builders and polywords. The organizing function as the global macro-organizer is carried out by sentence builder formulaic sequences, while the organizing function as the micro-organizer is fulfilled by polyword formulaic sequences. This paper investigates the writing samples of 30 college students, examining how they have used formulaic sequences in CET4 writing. The investigation findings indicate that college students have not been fully conscious of the significance of the organizing functions of formulaic sequences in CET4 writing. From the writing samples, we can find paragraphs without the topic sentence, or paragraphs containing sentences which are irrelevant to the topic sentence. To our joy, college students have noticed the issue of inter-sentential relationship, and they have used some transitional expressions, though some transitions are far-fetched. At the end of this paper, we attempt to offer some suggestions as to why and how to teach formulaic sequences concerning CET4 writing.