A Study On The Use Of Formulaic Sequences In Writing By College Students

Recently, the formulaic aspect of language has aroused such a keen interest amongtheoretical linguists, applied linguists, sociolinguists and language teachers that there hasbeen a variety of terminology of this language phenomenon, including ready-madechunks, lexicalized sentence stems, lexical phrases, and formulaic language/sequences.Various studies have shown that the use of formulaic sequences is a commonphenomenon in the early stages of first and second language acquisition. There might besome controversy about whether formulaic sequences can provide raw material for lateranalysis and for the generation of some grammatical rules. Even though, some recentresearch put the language phenomenon of formulaic sequence at the very center oflanguage. Several researchers propose that the definition of language knowledge beexpanded to include memorized chunks in addition to generative rules (eg. Nattinger &DeCarrico, 1992;Pawley & Syder, 1983;Skehan, 1998;Wray, 2002). Recent secondlanguage acquisition research has demonstrated that the use of formulaic sequences mayhelp learners save effort in processing and communication, and facilitate fluency in bothspoken and written language.Formulaic sequences play an important role in second language use. Therefore, thepresent study, by employing a writing test and a questionnaire, attempts to find out thegeneral characteristics of the use of formulaic sequences in students' writing and theunderlying reasons. Different from previous studies, most of which focus on advancedlearners, the present study focuses on the intermediate non-English majors.The result of the analysis of the writing test shows that students' writing of Englishcontains a large number of attempts at formulaic sequences, but their use of thesesequences in writing is far from satisfying. They are filled with types of errors eitherbecause of a fusion or of correct form of formulaic sequences used in a wrong context.By fusion, it means a product of the learner's grammar, created by the application of arule that may or may not be native like, and then stored whole and retrieved onsubsequent occasions (Peters, 1983, Cited in Wray, 2002a). The underlying reasons maybe varied, and by analyzing the questionnaire by SPSS statistic software, the resultreveals that students fail to attach enough importance to the writing practice and theytend to memorize formulaic sequences out of context. In other words, students domemorize a lot of formulaic sequences, but they do not know how to use them correctlysince they only notice the form but ignore the context. Therefore, it's recommended inthe study that students raise their awareness in noticing the differences between standardformulaic sequences and their non-standard expressions and memorize them within acontext.