Formulaic expressions (FEs), such as conventional collocations (e.g., fresh air) and phrases (e.g., take a break), constitute a significant part of language use in our daily lives (Erman & Warren, 2000). FEs are defined as multiword units that holistically represent a single meaning, and they are likely stored and retrieved as unanalyzed…

Over the past two decades, the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) has become a popular buzzword in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Although applications of the ILH can improve students' learning of productive vocabulary, this effect appears to be transitory. Students' learning of productive vocabulary often fades over time, as shown…

This article suggests three teaching ideas to help L2 learners improve speaking performances through form-focused instruction using formulaic language. Formulaic language is considered an effective way to foster speaking fluency because prefabricated chunks are faster to retrieve than constructing sentences word by word (Wray, 2002). In spite of…

The present study aims to explore the effects of corpus-based teaching on English language learners' pragmatic comprehension and production of 19 formulaic sequences (FS), categorized under agreements, disagreements, self-clarifications and other-clarifications. The study had a quasi-experimental research design with a pre-test, immediate…

This article reports on the results of action research conducted in a university ESP classroom in Oman. The impetus for this research was the practitioner's dissatisfaction with the current practice of introducing the grammatical concept of the English passive and its subsequent results. Framed within the sociocultural theory of cognitive…

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks and internet resources exhibit various formats and implementations of exercises on phrasal verbs. The experimental study reported here examines whether some of these might be more effective than others. EFL learners at a university in Japan were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups. Two groups were…

This study investigated the effects of three fluency-enhancing activities on interpreting learners' performance. Four groups of students took part in the experiment. They were assigned to one of the four task conditions: pre-task planning, task repetition, formulae acquisition, and a control group. A temporal approach was adopted to measure…

Corpus linguistics has established that language is highly patterned. The use of patterned language has been linked to processing advantages with respect to listening and reading, which has implications for perceptions of fluency. The last twenty years has seen an increase in the integration of corpus-based language learning, or data-driven…

This study examines the effects of processing instruction (PI) alone versus PI and output (O) on the acquisition of three conjunctional and infinitival phrases in Spanish. Seventy intermediate and advanced-intermediate high school participants received: 1) PI on three consecutive days (PI + PI + PI); 2) PI for two days and meaning-based output…

Formulaic language is important to language acquisition; however, English language learners are often reported to have problems with formulaic expressions. Several lists of formulaic sequences have been proposed, mainly for developing teaching and testing materials. However, their limited numbers and insufficient usage information seem unable to…