The Effects Of Teaching Formulaic Sequences In Chinese Non-English Majors’ Oral English Class

From the periphery to the center in the circle of SLA, formulaic sequences (FSs) witness bursting research passion and devoted research efforts. Research work in the past gradually unveiled this complicated language phenomenon by digging out more and more FS roles in language learning, including enhancing fluency, facilitating social interaction, approaching native-like selection, and so on. These multiword units stored and retrieved whole embrace diverse implications for L2 learning and teaching. Among them, enhancing fluency has claimed undivided attention for the misted psychological construct underlying fluency. To bring the roles into play, teaching attempts on formulaic sequences in L2 class emerge at the right moment.The present study is undertaken to explore the effects of teaching FSs in Chinese non-English majors’ oral English class, focusing on changes in learners’ FS use, oral fluency and differences occurring between high achievers and low achievers. Besides, changes undergone in learners making great progress were also closely examined.The experimental group (EG) participated in a fifteen-week teaching experiment focusing on raising learners’awareness of FSs while the control group (CG) received the same amount of traditional instruction. Frequency, accuracy and variation of FSs in monologues produced by participants before and after the experiment were examined to track changes in FS use. Rate of speech (SR) and ratio of pruned length (RPL) were also examined to identify changes in participant’s fluency development. Finally, case study on four students making great progress in oral score was conducted to take a close look at the effects of the teaching practice.Data analysis yielded the following findings:Firstly, teaching FSs in oral English class was effective in improving learners’ FS use. The EG made greater improvement in FS variation than that of the CG in the posttest and outperformed the CG in FS frequency. In the EG, the FS variation of high achievers in the posttest was statistically different from that in the pretest while low achievers did not show any significant improvement in their FS use.Secondly, teaching FSs in oral English class contributed to learners’ oral fluency development. Changes of EG’s RPL in the posttest approached a significant difference. High achievers’ SR and RPL in the posttest were significantly different from those in the pretest while no change was made by low achievers.Thirdly, FS use of learners who are highly responsive to the treatment reveals that the FSs added to learners’ repertoire were mostly polywords and phrasal constraints. The high achievers and low achievers seemed to be uniform in that the number of phrasal constraints doubled while that of sentence builders remained stable. As for the erroneous FS use, it increased with the total FS use. Low achievers’ erroneous FS use types became more varied in the posttest than in the pretest while that of high achievers remain relatively stable.The effectiveness of teaching FSs in oral English class in improving learners’ FS use and enhancing oral fluency indicates that more research efforts are needed to flesh out such a practice for it to display great vigor in L2 teaching and learning.