Optimization Of Formulaic Sequence Boxes In ELDs

OALD9,MEDAL2 and LDOCE6 set formulaic sequence boxes to better meet learner's needs of daily expressions,but studies on the treatment of the boxes in ELDs are scarce.The present study investigated the strengths and weaknesses of the treatment of the boxes in the three ELDs in a bid to propose some guiding principles and specific suggestions based on user-friendliness for optimizing the boxes in the ELDs and providing some guides for setting similar boxes in the other ELDs.The contrastive analysis is adopted to compare the presentation and pragmatic information of the boxes.From the contrast,we found that the introductory and cross-reference information of the boxes are not sufficient,which is harmful to users' findability of the boxes,and the explanatory information of the formulaic sequences is not rich or complete enough,which is not helpful in enhancing the comprehensibility of the formulaic sequences.In terms of the pragmatic information,it is neither comprehensive or complete nor highlighted and the distribution of formulaic sequences performing different types of speech acts is not balanced,which give raise to low usability of the formulaic sequences.Based on the above-mentioned researches and principles of user-friendliness,this paper proposed three guiding principles: 1)findability: users can access to the formulaic sequence boxes and formulaic sequences successfully and easily;2)comprehensibility: different elements in the boxes should be helpful in strengthening users' comprehensibility of the formulaic sequences and the formulaic sequences themselves should be comprehensible enough for users;3)usability: the boxes should be useful in helping users communicate with others appropriately and successfully in everyday conversation.Meanwhile,some specific suggestions are provided under each principle.At the end of the study,three tentative sample boxes are provided.