| Formulaic language has been widely used by many Chinese English learners, thus moreand more language researchers have recognized the significance of formulaic languageresearch. Especially in recent years, the study of formulaic language has become very popularand has been widely used in English teaching. It is believed that the acquisition ability offormulaic language exerts great influence on students’ second language learning. The abilityof formulaic language acquisition has become one of the standards of measuring the level ofEnglish of college students. Thus, an increasing number of students pay attention to thelearning and accumulation of formulaic language and apply formulaic language into theirEnglish writing, especially in their timed writing or examination compositions aiming toimprove their language fluency and accuracy. Therefore, this study mainly explores thecharacteristics of the frequently used formulaic language in TEM4simulated examinationargumentative compositions, probes into the possible reasons resulted to the target formulaiclanguage and finally tries to give some indications and advices about English writingteaching.The current study focuses on answering the following four questions:(1)What are the general characteristics of formulaic language used by English majors intheir TEM4stimulated examination argumentative compositions including the quantity,variety, frequency and the distribution of each category?(2)In English majors’ TEM4stimulated examination argumentative compositions, what output characteristics do the target formulaic language has between higher level and lowerlevel compositions?(3)What the most frequently used formulaic language are there in English majors’TEM4stimulated examination argumentative compositions?(4)What are major reasons that students like using the target formulaic language in theirTEM4stimulated examination argumentative compositions?The first three questions are probed through quantitative approach with both manualhelp and the help of two software packages: Antconc3.2.4and SPSS16.0, while the last one isexplored through qualitative interview. The ‘N-grams’ tool of Antconc3.2.4and the tool ofChi-square tests of SPSS16.0are mainly used for the present study.195pieces of TEM4simulated examination argumentative compositions which including96pieces of high-levelcompositions and99pieces of low-level compositions are analyzed and studied. The resultsshow that English majors use a limited number of formulaic language and their variety of thetarget formulaic language is low, what’s more,3-word target formulaic language and“Sentence builders” are used most frequently by English majors in their TEM4simulatedexamination argumentative compositions. In addition, Chi-square tests results show that thereare significant differences on the characteristics of target formulaic language between higherlevel and lower level compositions.3-word target formulaic language,“Polywords” and“Sentence builders” are used more frequently in high-level compositions than in low-levelcompositions. Finally, through qualitative interview, five major reasons resulted to thefrequently used formulaic language are summarized including: English proficiency, students’positivity of learning formulaic language, the teaching methods of English teachers, writingreference books and students’psychological factors.In order to improve the proficiency of formulaic language, great efforts need to be madeby both students and teachers. Students should enhance their awareness of formulaiclanguage, summarize, categorize and memorize the target formulaic language. Practice of thememorized formulaic language is also an essential step for applying the formulaic language.Teachers, on one hand, should guide students to pay high attention to the formulaic languageand develop their ability of recognizing formulaic language. On the other hand, teachers needencourage students to summarize, analyze, memorize and practice the formulaic language which they have accumulated in their daily study. |
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