The term ‘phrasal vocabulary’ refers to multi-word expressions, that is, idioms, templates or “strings of words, which appear to be processed without recourse to their lowest level of composition” (Wray, 2002, p.4). Formulaicity constitutes an essential feature of language production and comprehension, and phrasal vocabulary plays a central role in everyday language usage. This research study replicates the experimental design carried out in the study Acquiring phrasal vocabulary by Kuiper, Columbus, & Schmitt (to appear), which used a cloze procedure to test three main hypotheses: a) There are significant differences between the degree of acquisition of formulaic language items by native and non-native speakers of English; b) The frequency of usage of the head-verbs contained in verb plus complement formulaic sequences is positively correlated with the acquisition of such sequences; and, c) Phrasal vocabulary is age graded. In the present study the target language is Spanish instead of English. In addition, available evidence suggests that cultural integration seems to be linked to the acquisition of formulaic language. Thus, a questionnaire intended to measure the participants’ cultural integration level to the target language community was developed. The results of this study supported the predictions that the amount of formulaic language acquired by native speakers is positively correlated with age, and that non-native speakers’ phrasal vocabulary is significantly less extensive than that of native speakers. Most importantly, the results also showed a significant effect of verb frequency on the participants’ acquaintance with the formulaic sequences tested. However, the prediction that cultural integration would be positively correlated with the number of correct answers in the cloze test for both groups was not supported. Extending to the Spanish language the results reported by Kuiper, Columbus, & Schmitt supports the argument that the processes of acquisition of formulaic language across diverse linguistics systems function in a very similar way (Corpas Pastor, 2003). A better comprehension of the mechanisms by which speakers acquire formulaic language may significantly contribute to the development of an appropriate methodology to teach phrasal vocabulary to second language learners.

The term ‘phrasal vocabulary’ refers to multi-word expressions, that is, idioms, templates or “strings of words, which appear to be processed without recourse to their lowest level of composition” (Wray, 2002, p.4). Formulaicity constitutes an essential feature of language production and comprehension, and phrasal vocabulary plays a central role in everyday language usage. This research study replicates the experimental design carried out in the study Acquiring phrasal vocabulary by Kuiper, Columbus, & Schmitt (to appear), which used a cloze procedure to test three main hypotheses: a) There are significant differences between the degree of acquisition of formulaic language items by native and non-native speakers of English; b) The frequency of usage of the head-verbs contained in verb plus complement formulaic sequences is positively correlated with the acquisition of such sequences; and, c) Phrasal vocabulary is age graded. In the present study the target language is Spanish instead of English. In addition, available evidence suggests that cultural integration seems to be linked to the acquisition of formulaic language. Thus, a questionnaire intended to measure the participants’ cultural integration level to the target language community was developed. The results of this study supported the predictions that the amount of formulaic language acquired by native speakers is positively correlated with age, and that non-native speakers’ phrasal vocabulary is significantly less extensive than that of native speakers. Most importantly, the results also showed a significant effect of verb frequency on the participants’ acquaintance with the formulaic sequences tested. However, the prediction that cultural integration would be positively correlated with the number of correct answers in the cloze test for both groups was not supported. Extending to the Spanish language the results reported by Kuiper, Columbus, & Schmitt supports the argument that the processes of acquisition of formulaic language across diverse linguistics systems function in a very similar way (Corpas Pastor, 2003). A better comprehension of the mechanisms by which speakers acquire formulaic language may significantly contribute to the development of an appropriate methodology to teach phrasal vocabulary to second language learners.

A quantitative study was conducted to determine if the amount of formulaic language influenced ESL teachers' perceptions (n=102) of non-native writing skill, as evidenced by composite and sub-scale scores on the ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs et al., 1981). Formulaic language was operationalized as 25 three-word strings sampled from the writing sub-list of the Academic Formulas List (Simpson-Vlach & Ellis, 2010) and further validated as frequent in the Michigan Corpus of Upper Level Student Papers. The target formulaic sequences were divided into three experimental groups representing a low, mid, and high amount of formulaic language. Four advanced non-native writers generated argumentative, timed writing samples that incorporated the target sequences. The writing samples were then assembled into data collection packets and distributed at eight Intensive English Programs across the southeastern United States. A repeated measures ANOVA indicated that there was a significant difference in composite score (p < .05) between the control and three experimental conditions; however, the essays that incorporated 16 and 25 formulaic sequences scored significantly lower than those with zero or eight target sequences. When the amount of syntactical and semantic errors were strictly controlled for, the composite scores also fell between the control and experimental conditions, but the decrease in score was not significant (p > .05). The content, organization, vocabulary, language, and mechanics sub-scales were also compared using a repeated measures MANOVA. In content, organization, and language, the control and low essays outscored the mid and high conditions (p < .05). For the vocabulary sub-scale, the control and low condition were not significantly different, but the control essays only outperformed the mid level essays. The low essays outperformed both the mid and high essays. In terms of mechanics, there was only a significant difference between the low and mid level essays. The results of the MANOVA were consistent when the amount of syntactic and semantic errors were controlled. Implications for teaching suggest that the Academic Formulas List would not benefit academically-oriented L2 learners preparing to enter a university. While corpus tools are valuable in helping teachers, material writers, and publishers improve vocabulary instruction in the English classroom, not all statistically salient lexical combinations are important for non-native writers to master and incorporate in their academic discourse.

Formulaic language (FL) has long been a research topic investigated by various schools of researchers. Most of the previous researches focused on English as Second Language. The applicability of the past research results to other languages, especially Chinese as a second language, is still uncertain.The present study attempts to investigate the classroom teaching of Chinese formulaic language and its effects on students writing performance. Two sections of 3rd year Chinese L2 learners at Brigham Young University were chosen to participate the research, serving as the treatment group and the control group respectively. Both groups were required to write on the same topics at different times in a semester. 80 responses from four topics were then chosen to analyze the effects of using Chinese FL.Results show that among the four types of Chinese FL, both collocations and transitions are used frequently, while the other two types of Chinese FL are less used by participants from the experimental group. Except the first topic, the adoption of Chinese FL does contribute to more Chinese characters in the writing responses of the participants from the experimental group, which reveal learners confidence in Chinese writing after the FL training. Also, both the remarkably higher average scores for each topic and the decreasing error rates demonstrate that the adoption of Chinese FL teaching positively influences participants writing performance. Lastly, the contributions of the four different types of Chinese FL to participants better writing performance are also discussed.

Since corpus linguistics gained popularity as a methodology in the latter half of the 20th century, second language acquisition research has seen the emergence of work investigating formulaic language, such as idioms, lexical bundles, and collocations. A collocation is a string of words that co-occur more routinely than probability would predict, and can be considered as an existing entity beyond the component words (Manning & Schütze, 1999). Although formulaic language processing has been investigated by many researchers, uncertainty exists regarding whether such items are processed holistically as single units, or componentially in the form of the constituent words, with no definitive research having weighted the evidence in either direction.The purposes of the current study are threefold. The first purpose involves conducting research specifically designed to investigate whether L1 and L2 collocational processing is componential or holistic. This issue is important because existing research makes claims based on putative entailments, such as recognition latencies, as opposed to assessing behavior with manipulations that could only produce certain results if processing is holistic. The second purpose involves investigating collocational processing through a unique letter transposition condition that was specifically designed to isolate a holistic processing effect. The third purpose involves assessing data from an experiment designed to investigate collocation processing during orthographic word recognition. Fifty-four adjective-noun collocations and 18 novel pairs were embedded in sentences and presented to L1 and L2 English users in a self-paced reading experiment. The target items were presented in one of three conditions; no transposition (e.g., pretty girl), word transposition (e.g., prtety gril), and phrase transposition (e.g., prettg yirl). Results revealed that phrase transpositions engendered significantly longer reading times than the other conditions, indicating that these manipulations were processed as word-final and word-initial substitutions as opposed to a single phrase-internal transposition. Thus, the results indicated that the collocations were most likely processed componentially as two separate words. These findings have implications for collocation processing theory by suggesting that future models should consider collocations as being componentially processed at the orthographic, word recognition stage, and that the faster reaction times observed in previous studies should be considered in terms of an entrenchment continuum as opposed to evidence of holistic processing. / Teaching & Learning

Speakers of Persian, like speakers of other languages, utilise Routine Politeness Formulae (RPF) to negotiate central interpersonal interactions. RPF in Persian have not received any systematic description as to their forms, their functions, their typical conditions of use and their discourse structure rules. Bridging this gap, for the first time, RPF from five frequently-used speech acts – namely, greeting, leave-taking, apologizing, thanking and requesting – are documented in this thesis. Data were derived from Persian soap operas and from role-plays with native speakers, and were entered into a database for further analysis. The analysis is qualitative and the data are conceived of as phraseological units to be represented as dictionary entries. The study of the aforementioned speech acts and their related array of RPF reveals the dynamics of interpersonal polite behaviour among Persians, reflecting the following socio-cultural values prevalent in Iranian society: (i) its group-oriented nature, (ii) a tendency towards positive (solidarity) politeness, (iii) sensitivity to remaining in people’s debt, (iv) sensitivity to giving trouble to others, (v) a high premium on reciprocity in interpersonal communications, (vi) the importance of seniority in terms of age and social status, and (vii) differentiation between members of the ‘inner circle’ and the ‘outer circle’. This thesis also reveals the dominance of the strategy of self-lowering and other-elevating. Almost all RPF in Persian allow for the use of this pervasive strategy, which is also manifested by two further sub-strategies: (i) a propensity to exaggerate favours received from others, and (ii) giving precedence to others over oneself. Finally, it is suggested that Islamic teachings have significantly influenced the formation and use of certain RPF. The dictionary resulting from this work can serve as a resource for researchers in sociolinguistics and pragmatics, and for the teaching of Persian to non-Persian speakers.

This essay presents a study of retention of idioms delving into a pedagogical approach by presenting them to a group of lower secondary students. The study also explores students’ memory retention whilst concurrently investigating if certain types of idioms are retained to a greater extent than others. For the sake of assessing memory retention in relation to these various types of idiomatic transparency, the selected idioms have been divided into three separate categories; transparent, semi-transparent and opaque depending on their literal and figurative meaning. This essay argues that opaque idioms are retained to a lesser extent in memory due to their non-transparent metaphorical meaning. In fact, the most striking finding is that idioms pertaining to the opaque category are indeed more difficult for students to learn and are also forgotten the fastest. Previous research has put emphasis on the complex structure of idioms and opinions seem divided regarding to what extent the teaching of idioms should be implemented together with other vocabulary items in a classroom setting. On the other hand, the same research emphasizes the great value of idioms; potentially expanding student vocabulary and making the English language more nuanced and native-like.

<p>The theory underlying L2 oral fluency has focused on cognitive processes, particularly proceduralization (Anderson, 1983; Levelt, 1989, 1999) and linguistic constructs, especially vocabulary and grammar (Segalowitz, 2010). Towell, Hawkins, and Bazergui (1996) argued that development of formulaic language enables automatic speech production. However, no research has studied the longitudinal development of L2 oral fluency concurrently with any of the following lexical variables: lexical frequency profile, formulaic language use, and MTLD (a measure of lexical diversity). The purpose of the present study is to clarify the process by which L2 oral fluency, syntax, and vocabulary develop concurrently.</p> <p>Data analysis involved three sequential phases: oral fluency analysis, lexico-syntactic analysis, and discourse analysis. Oral fluency measures were calculated using the transcribed oral test responses of 100 L1-Chinese EAP learners at the beginning and end of a required two-course EAP language and culture sequence at Purdue University. The task completed was a computer-administered, two-minute argumentative speaking task. This study included eight oral fluency measures: speech rate, mean length of speech run, articulation rate, phonation time ratio, mean length of silent pause, mean length of filled pause, silent pause frequency, and filled pause frequency. For the ten participants who made the largest percentage-wise oral fluency gains (in terms of the oral fluency variable associated with the largest effect size of gains), oral transcripts were analyzed to compute descriptive statistics for the three lexical variables mentioned above and three syntactic variables: coordinate clause ratio, dependent clause ratio, and words per T-unit. </p> Results indicated significant change in all oral fluency measures, except mean length of silent pause and mean length of filled pause. The largest gains were made in mean length of speech run. Of the linguistic variables, the largest longitudinal change was associated with coordinate clause ratio. Discourse analysis of the transcripts of large fluency gainers' pre-post responses suggested that large fluency gainers used coordinate clauses to build more sophisticated discourse models in the post-test response than they did in the pre-test response. Implications for L2 oral fluency theory, EAP pedagogy, and L2 oral assessment are discussed.

Applied linguistics has lately been seen in studies of formulaicity of language operating through recurrent word combinations. The present study deals with one type of word combinations, namely lexical bundles (LBs), which are defined as a sequence of three or more words that frequently co-occur in a particular register (Biber et al., 1999). The present study is a corpus-based analysis of four-word lexical bundles extracted from Music research articles (RAs). The Corpus of Music Research Articles (CMRA) of one million words was created in order to perform structural classification of the retrieved lexical bundles and an analysis of their functions. The CMRA includes 110 articles collected from international music journals from various music subdisciplines. In order to find which lexical bundles were characteristic of music research specifically, the findings were compared to previous research based on other academic disciplines. The list of 218 lexical bundles was compared to the one of three different subject areas (Jalilifar et al., 2016) with the purpose of identification of discipline-specific LBs (n=102) which included 20 topic-specific bundles; and general lexical bundles (n=116) which included 56 core bundles shared among Music and three subject areas (Art and Humanities, Sciences and Social sciences). Structurally and functionally, the analysis of the extracted lexical bundles demonstrated that native English expert writers predominantly used preposition-based phrases (50%), with respect to structure; and research-oriented bundles (74%), with respect to function. The findings have pedagogical applications and could be used in courses in English for Specific Purposes.

Native speakers often ignore the limitless potential of language and stick to institutionalized formulaic sequences. These sequences are stored and processed as wholes, rather than as the individual words and grammatical rules which make them up. Due to research on formulaic sequence in spoken language, English as a Second Language / Foreign Language pedagogy has begun to follow suit. There has been a call for a shift from the traditional focus on isolated grammar and vocabulary to formulaic sequences and context. I tested this hypothesis with 19 L2 English learners who received 5 weeks of task-based instruction and found substantial progress in oral fluency only for the experimental group. Differences between pretest and posttest oral fluency were examined by looking at the learners' speech rate and their mean length of run. Subjective evaluation of fluency by 16 native English judges confirmed the calculated measures.