A Study On The Formulaic Speech In Spontaneous Talk By Chinese EFL Learners

Recently, the employment of formulaic speech, or the prefabricated multi-word chunks, has been recognized as an important aspect of language use in daily life. Therefore, some SLA researchers argue that the development of L2 system is realized by the accumulation of formulaic speech, and reflected by use of these multi-word chunks (Pawley & Syder 1983; Ellis 1994). The present study attempts to investigate how Chinese EFL learners employ formulaic speech in monologic spontaneous talk. Oral production by learners of different levels was transcribed, described and analyzed, through which the overall characteristics of Chinese L2 learners'formulaic speech could be revealed. Data in the study come from video disks of the 5th annual Star of Outlook English Talent Competition. Eighty contestants'performance in sections, which involved spontaneous talk, was closely transcribed, and then a corpus of approximately 17,000 tokens was established. Both quantitative and preliminary qualitative analyses of the data generate the following results:Firstly, approximately 27% of Chinese learners'production in spontaneous talk is formulaic speech, with variations among different learner groups. Secondly, there is no significant difference in variety of the formulaic sequences among learners of different levels, with nearly 40% of the formulaic speech being repetition. This indicates Chinese learners do not progress much in improving the scope of the target language sequences over years of instruction. Finally, a closer look at the formulaic speech by Chinese learners shows that there are both inter-sequential errors such as wrong choice of sequence which does not fix a given context, and intra-sequential errors represented by addition, deletion and replacement of lexical items to the sequence. Results in the study indicate that Chinese EFL learners'use of formulaic speech is deviant from the native speakers in three aspects:1. Frequency of learners'formulaic speech is lower than that of native speakers;2. Much of the formulaic speech produced by L2 learners is repetitive;3. Accuracy is a problem for L2 learners in spontaneous use of formulaic speech.Drawing on these results, this article proposes a tentative model to account for the observed patterns of formulaic language use across learners of different levels of classroom instruction, that is, beginners and tertiary level students rely more on formulaic speech in online talk, while secondary learners, influenced by pedagogical emphasis, are more likely to resort to the syntactic analyzing system in spontaneous speech. These findings promise some implications to L2 teachers, learners, as well as experts in material development.