| Significance of formulaic sequences has been recognized by an increasing number of language acquisition researchers. The term "formulaic sequences" proposed by Wray (2000) is adopted in the thesis because it can cover other labels referring to the phenomenon of formulaicity, such as chunks, lexical phrases, formulaic language, etc. Fonnulaic sequences in the thesis are defined as multiword or multiform strings which are either entirely fixed or with open slots to fill in; they are prefabricated, stored and retrieved by language learners as a whole rather than being created from individual items with grammatical rules.A great quantity of researches prove that formulaic sequences are helpful in improving L2speaking proficiency. However, researches at home pay more attention to their roles in reading and writing with speaking slightly touched upon. Therefore, the thesis studies the relationship between the use of formulaic sequences and speaking proficiency of Chinese English Learners (CEL) based on structural oriented taxonomy proposed by Nattinger and DeCarrico (2000). That is, fonnulaic sequences can be classified into polywords, institutionalized expressions, phrasal constraints and sentence builders.The thesis aims to answer four research questions.(1) What are the general characteristics of formulaic sequences across two groups?(2) Is there any difference in frequency of formulaic sequences across two groups?(3) Is there any difference in distribution of four types’formulaic sequences across two groups?(4) What is the relationship between the use of formulaic sequences and L2speaking proficiency? The first three questions will be solved with quantitative analysis, while the last one with qualitative analysis.Experiment data are extracted from a sub-corpus of Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL). The sub-corpus is founded on the basis of TEM-4oral test with three speaking activities (retelling a story, talking on a given topic and role playing). In the thesis, spoken data of Group001in Task2in2002are adopted. Because testees’group ranks can indicate their speaking proficiency, the first five (01to05) make up of higher rated group and the last five (31to35) compose of lower rated group.Based on data analysis, there are five major findings:(1) Higher achievers employ more formulaic sequences than lower achievers, but their percentages in both groups are low with10.43%and9.57%respectively. For one thing, more exposure to authentic input, greater efforts in storage and more practice in speaking help higher achievers use more formulaic sequences. For another, none of them master formulaic sequences as native speakers do due to less attention paid to speaking, reluctance from students to practice oral English and some unreasonable trend in speaking class.(2) Higher achievers employ more polywords and sentence builders than lower achievers, but both share the same percentage rank of four types’formulaic sequences. On the one hand, higher achievers have better realized significance of polywords as discourse connectors and sentence builders as discourse frameworks. On the other, formulaic sequences are used from the most to the least are phrasal constraints, sentence builders, polywords and institutionalized expressions because of their features (length, variation and discontinuity) and the nature of Task2.(3) Lower achievers produce more non-native formulaic sequences and make more mistakes than higher achievers. The reason is that lower achievers are not fully exposed to authentic input and not familiar with their usage, so that they tend to create some according to LI or incorrectly employ them.(4) The more and wider use of formulaic sequences is helpful in improving L2speaking proficiency on the condition that they are used natively and correctly. The experiment suggests formulaic sequeces make discourse more fluent with little pauses, increase variety of words and expressions and guarantee native and grammatical expressions.Pedagogical suggestions are then given to improve L2speaking proficiency with formulaic sequences. When attention is paid to enough authentic input, proper teaching methods, more practice in different speaking activities and right attitudes to mistakes, formulaic sequences will make their deserved contribution to improving L2speaking proficiency. |
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