Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing And Use (Language Learning & Language Teaching)

315 Pages·2004·2.16 MB·English

by  Norbert Schmitt

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FormulaicSequences
LanguageLearningandLanguageTeaching
TheLL&LTmonographseriespublishesmonographsaswellaseditedvolumes
on applied and methodological issues in the field of language pedagogy. The
focusoftheseriesisonsubjectssuchasclassroomdiscourseandinteraction;
languagediversityineducationalsettings;bilingualeducation;languagetesting
andlanguageassessment;teachingmethodsandteachingperformance;learning
trajectories in second language acquisition; and written language learning in
educationalsettings.
Serieseditors
BirgitHarley
OntarioInstituteforStudiesinEducation,UniversityofToronto
JanH.Hulstijn
DepartmentofSecondLanguageAcquisition,UniversityofAmsterdam
Volume9
FormulaicSequences:Acquisition,processinganduse
EditedbyNorbertSchmitt
Formulaic Sequences
Acquisition, processing and use
Editedby
Norbert Schmitt
UniversityofNottingham
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
TM Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirements
8
ofAmericanNationalStandardforInformationSciences–Permanence
ofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials,ansiz39.48-1984.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Formulaicsequences:acquisition,processinganduse/editedbyNorbert
Schmitt.
p. cm.(LanguageLearningandLanguageTeaching,issn1569–9471
;v.9)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Languageandlanguages--Studyandteaching.2.Lexicology.3.
Patternperception.I.Schmitt,Norbert,1956-II.Series.
P53. F654 2004
407-dc22 2004041065
isbn9027217076(Eur.)/1588114996(US)(Hb;alk.paper)
isbn9027217084(Eur.)/1588115003(US)(Pb;alk.paper)
©2004–JohnBenjaminsB.V.
Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyform,byprint,photoprint,microfilm,or
anyothermeans,withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher.
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Contents
Preface viii
Formulaic sequences in action: An introduction 
Norbert Schmitt and Ronald Carter
Measurement of formulaic sequences 23
John Read and Paul Nation
Formulaic performance in conventionalised varieties of speech 37
Koenraad Kuiper
Knowledge and acquisition of formulaic sequences: A longitudinal study 55
Norbert Schmitt, Zoltán Dörnyei, Svenja Adolphs, and Valerie Durow
Individual differences and their effects on formulaic sequence acquisition 87
Zoltán Dörnyei, Valerie Durow, and Khawla Zahran
Social-cultural integration and the development of formulaic sequences 07
Svenja Adolphs and Valerie Durow
Are corpus-derived recurrent clusters psycholinguistically valid? 27
Norbert Schmitt, Sarah Grandage, and Svenja Adolphs
The eyes have it: An eye-movement study into the processing
of formulaic sequences 53
Geoffrey Underwood, Norbert Schmitt, and Adam Galpin
Exploring the processing of formulaic sequences through
a self-paced reading task 73
Norbert Schmitt and Geoffery Underwood
Comparing knowledge of formulaic sequences across L1, L2, L3, and L4 9
Carol Spöttl and Michael McCarthy
The effect of typographic salience on the look up and comprehension
of unknown formulaic sequences 227
Hugh Bishop
vi Contents
‘Here’s one I prepared earlier’: Formulaic language learning on television 249
Alison Wray
Facilitating the acquisition of formulaic sequences:
An exploratory study in an EAP context 269
Martha Jones and Sandra Haywood
Index 30
To my colleagues at the University of Nottingham
Preface
Lexical patterning is an increasingly important issue in applied linguistics as it
becomes ever more apparent that such patterning pervades most language use.
This is not a new insight, with numerous scholars referring to such patterning
over the years. However these scholars have used a wide range of terminology
for the phenomenon, and the research has been scattered across various fields.
This led to a quite limited awareness of lexical patterning in the applied linguis-
tics field in general, and it was only relatively recently that the efforts of scholars
like Nattinger and DeCarrico, Sinclair, Moon, Kuiper, Wray, and Biber have led
to it becoming more widely known.
A considerable amount of the research has attempted to describe the na-
ture of various lexical patterns (idioms, collocations, sentence stems, etc.), often
based on corpus evidence. Other research has looked at the role of formulaic
patterns in the acquisition of first language. Beyond this, there is little research
which has focused on lexical patterns in second language acquisition, or on the
whole issue of how lexical patterns are processed in the mind. The time seemed
ripe for research addressing these areas.
A team at the Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics (CRAL) at the Uni-
versity of Nottingham was able to carry out a cycle of research into lexical pat-
terning, and this volume reports on our findings. During our investigations, we
became aware that other lexically-minded scholars around the world were con-
currently carrying out studies in the same area, and some of their work is also
included in this book. As a package, we feel that the studies in this volume are
not only interesting in terms of their findings, but also in terms of variety of
methodology used. We have included the full research instrumentation wher-
ever possible for the interested reader.
I would like to thank several people for making this volume possible. Zoltán
Dörnyei, my co-director at CRAL, generated the grant that funded the whole
process, and was there through all of the ups and downs of the research. Svenja
Adolphs, Valerie Durow, Sarah Grandage and Khawla Zahran were the other
core team members without whom nothing would have happened. Colleagues
at the Centre for English Language Education (CELE) at the University of Not-
tingham allowed access to their students, and I would like to particularly thank
Preface ix
Rebecca Hughes, Martha Jones, and Sandra Haywood. Geoffrey Underwood
was a most helpful collaborator who helped open up exciting new methodolo-
gies in the study of formulaic sequences. I am grateful to non-CRAL colleagues
who have contributed welcome additions to the book: Hugh Bishop, Koenraad
Kuiper, Paul Nation, John Read, Carol Spöttl, and Alison Wray. In particular,
I would like to thank Alison Wray and Koenraad Kuiper for their very insight-
ful input, which improved the entire project immensely. Jan Hulstijn and Birgit
Harley proved to be supportive and insightful series editors and it is a pleasure
to have this volume in their series. Kees Vaes was a most friendly and efficient
liaison at John Benjamins Publishing. The Economic and Social Research Coun-
cil supported the research with Grant #R000239294.
I have enjoyed being part of this research, and hope that you find much of
interest in these studies. If you become interested in researching this area your-
self, all the better. Many of these studies are innovative now, but it would be
wonderful if we could look back in ten years and marvel at how much we had
progressed.
Norbert Schmitt
University of Nottingham
November 2003