The Effects of Teaching Mode and L1 Phraseological Background on Learner Formulaic Sequences

Abstract

Formulaic sequences have received considerable attention from phraseologists and TEFL researchers during the last decade. This study aims to investigate the effect of teaching mode and L1 phraseological background on learner formulaic sequences. 68 target formulaic sequences were divided in half and were taught in explicit vs. implicit modes to 10 leaners over one year. During the next year, each learner produced 10 essays within two-fortnight intervals. The 31984-word corpus was then explored to identify and tag the target sequences for their L1 background, and to calculate their Log-likelihood ratio in comparison to a reference native corpus. The results showed that explicit teaching of formulaic sequences was more efficient that the implicit, and that the existence of an L1 counterpart did not have any meaningful effect on the use of L2 sequences. However, teaching mode and L1 background do interact significantly. It was also found that overused and absent sequences in the learner corpus had distinctive functional profiles that could partially justify their abnormal frequency. The findings might contribute to phraseological pedagogy and promote the standards of Iranian learner corpora studies.