The Effects of Instruction of
Formulaic Chunks on Second Language
Learners’ Oral Production
Yuan-Yuan
Meng
Lecturer
in Chinese, Columbia
University
Formal linguistic approaches to second
language acquisition (SLA) have been the
dominant research trend for decades. The SLA
field abounds with studies investigating the rule-governed processes of
language acquisition and production. Until the 1990s, relatively little
attention has been paid to the other aspect of the language system—the prefabricated
language chunks, which are generally not rule-based, and which are also known
as formulaic sequences, formulaic expressions, or formulaic language (Wray,
2002). These formulaic sequences range on a continuum from fully fixed to
semi-fixed, including such multiword units as idioms, collocations, spoken
sequences with a simple slot, and so on (Lewis, 1993). Even though recent years
have witnessed a growth of research interest in the use of formulaic language
(Wood, 2002), studies which examine how instruction of formulaic sequences
affects second language (L2) learners’ development of oral proficiency have
remained limited. In this presentation, I will review two such studies.
Relating the findings of these studies to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign
language, I will also propose ways to improve Chinese learners’ oral fluency
through focused instruction of formulaic chunks.
Keywords: formulaic chunks, oral fluency