A Study Of Use Of Formulaic Sequences By Chinese EFL Learners In Their Expository Writings

This thesis reports a study which was designed to investigate the use of formulaic sequences by Chinese EFL learners in their expository writings. On the basis of the general description of the formulaic sequences identified in the learners'writings, this study seeks to explore the differences in the use of formulaic sequences in two different writing conditions (i.e. timed and untimed writing conditions) and between the learners of different proficiency levels. Attempts were also made to examine the correlation of the frequency and variety of use of formulaic sequences to the learners'writing proficiency. The ultimate purpose of the study is to find out what types of formulaic sequences are likely to enjoy predicting power to writing proficiency in both timed and untimed settings.The data used in this study were 60 pieces of expository writing, of which 30 were written in a timed testing setting and were extracted from SWECCL, a Chinese learner corpus. Another 30 were collected from Year Three English majors who were asked to perform the writing task in an untimed writing condition. Statistical calculation and data analysis generated the following major findings:Firstly, the formulaic sequences identified account for 21.5% of the total tokens of the sampled writings and the type/token ratio is 0.26, thus, nearly 74% of the formulaic sequences were repetitions. The repetitive use of formulaic sequences is related to the learners'limited linguistic resources at their disposal. The formulaic sequences identified in the sampled expository writings could be classified into four categories: fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level, semi-fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level, fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level and semi-fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level. Fixed formulaic sequences and semi-fixed formulaic sequences enjoy similar occurrences of use, suggesting that the learners may use both memory-based and rule-based formulaic sequences in their writings. Of the four types of formulaic sequences, fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level tend to be the learners'first choice in their writings. The possible explanation for this may go to the effectiveness of memory-based formulaic sequences used by the learners as a writing strategy.Secondly, the results of independent-samples t-test indicate that there are significant differences in the frequency of use of formulaic sequences between different writing conditions (i.e. timed and untimed writing conditions), but no significant differences were found in the variety of formulaic sequences, suggesting that writing conditions do not influence the variety of formulaic sequences used in the learners'writings but may affect the frequency of use of formulaic sequences. However, there are significant differences between different writing conditions, in individual types of formulaic sequences at the phrase level, namely, in the use of fixed and semi-fixed formulaic sequences.Thirdly, the cross-level comparisons reveal that, in both timed and untimed writing conditions, there are significant differences between the learners of different levels in the frequency of use and variety of formulaic sequences. In the case of the use of different types of formulaic sequences, there are different situations. In a timed writing condition, there are significant differences in fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level and semi-fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level, but in an untimed writing context, differences are at the significant level in semi-fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level and semi-fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level. In other words, higher-level learners are more likely to use all the types of formulaic sequences except fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level. These results obviously suggest that both the frequency of use and types of formulaic sequences may be used as one of the assessment tools to predict the learners'different writing proficiency levels.Finally, in both timed and untimed writing conditions, the frequency of use and variety of formulaic sequences are positively correlated to Chinese EFL learners'writing proficiency. The results of regression analysis show that both fixed and semi-fixed formulaic sequences at phrase level may combine to predict learners' writing proficiency with the former more powerful in a timed writing situation. In an untimed writing condition, semi-fixed formulaic sequences at sentence level may serve as the predictor to learners'writing proficiency.Pedagogically, this study may have at least three implications: 1) The traditional practice of language learning should not be abandoned as outdated learning strategies, and such a traditional practice as memorizing some basic phrases or sentences proves to be effective in promoting the learners'writing ability. 2) The teachers may use formulaic sequences as an efficient criterion for writing assessment in terms of linguistic accuracy and lexical variety. 3) The learners should be aware of using formulaic language to develop their writing competence, but should not be over-dependent on fixed linguistic knowledge to improve their language proficiency.