The literature on formulaic language lacks sufficient research on how L2 learners make progress in native-like formulaicity of their target language. This study analyzed the use of formulaic sequences (FSs) by 56 Chinese university English majors in their prepared monologues at the beginning and end of a three-year period and compared the student…

With Chinese native-speaker data as the baseline, this study investigates the use of the morphosyntactic particle DE by learners of Chinese as a second language. The general patterns are as follows: (a) DE tends to be deleted more in informal speech than in formal settings; (b) higher proficiency and longer residence in China--more interactions…

For various reasons, second language learners modify their speech by means of self-repair. This study, based on a small-scale corpus, shows the patterns and features of self-repairs by intermediate Chinese learners of English. The results suggest that intermediate Chinese learners of English more frequently make repairs than advanced Chinese…

A study examined the validity of the distinction between interactional language, used to express social relations and personal attitudes, and transactional language, which conveys factual or prepositional information and is message oriented, within and across languages and cultures. Data were drawn from natural telephone conversations of three…

A study of Chinese logograph recognition investigated: (1) whether word-length effect is generalizable to Chinese readers in recognizing context-free logographic characters; (2) whether readers from mainland China would outperform readers from Taiwan when each group read its own familiar logograph version; (3) whether both groups would perform…

To many Chinese students, learning the words such as "make" and "do" seems a piece of cake, yet learning how to use them appropriately is anther case. This paper aims to investigate Chinese learners' use of the verbs "make" and "do", two major representatives of high-frequency words from the perspective of…

Examines why learners of Mandarin use overt nouns and pronouns to a greater extent than native speakers. Findings indicate that no single syntactic structure is a significant contributor to the different rates of optional ellipsis but that some learners use ellipsis only in syntactic contexts permissible in English and most use it in a narrower…