formulaic sequences in eap and sla

Lyon 3 17/3/17GERAS 2017

TOWARDS THE CHARACTERISATION OF LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL NORMS

FORMULAIC SEQUENCES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Shona Whyte, Université Côté d’Azur Cédric Sarré, Université Paris Sorbonne

Whyte & SarréGERAS 17-03-17

FORMULAIC SEQUENCES IN EAP & SLA

Definitions of formulaic sequences

ESP corpus approach: learner-external

SLA approach: learner-internal

EAP teaching/learning research

OUTLINE

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Whyte & SarréGERAS 17/3/17

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• theory: processing, lexis, grammar • clinical: language disorders • development: L1 acquisition • learning and teaching: SLA • culture: oral traditions, variation • corpora: recurrent wordstrings

FORMULAIC LANGUAGE

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WRAY, 2012, LANGUAGE TEACHING


• genre analysis (Swales) • contrastive rhetoric • ethnographic approaches • corpus-based analysis

ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

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FLOWERDEW, 2002, ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

• distinctive linguistic features

• sub-technical vocabulary

• highly conventionalised, specific phraseology

• variation across genres & disciplines

GILQUIN, GRANGER & PAQUOT, 2012, JOURNAL OF ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES


• unanalysed multiword units

• a set of starter utterances that give entry into social interactions

• these sequences form the basis of developing productive grammars

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

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formulaic phrase

limited scope slot-and-frame pattern

fully productive schematic pattern

MYLES & CORDIER, 2017, STUDIES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

MYLES, HOOPER & MITCHELL, 1998

L2L1







DEFINITIONS

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WRAY 2012

BRIEF HISTORY

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prefabs 1976 Bolinger

routines 1976 Gleason & Weintraub

bootstrapping via multiword units

1976 Wong-Fillmore

lexicalised sentence stems 1983 Pawley & Syder

fluency depends on “islands of reliability”

1984 Raupach


WRAY 2012

1990S

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idiom principle versus open choice 1987/1991 Sinclair

lexical approach 1993 Lewis

formulaic language in SLA 1995 Weinert

construction grammar 1995 Goldberg

corpus approach to fixed expressions & idioms 1998 Moon

acquisition: formulaicity > productivity > formulaicity 1999 Perkins


WRAY 2012

2000S

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COBUILD: corpus research to inform linguistic theory 2000 Huntson & Francis

best theory of grammar reflects how we compute language in real

time2002 Jackendorff

“formulas are lexical chunks that result from binding frequent

collocations”2002 Ellis

usage-based account of L1 acquisition

2003 Tomasello

lexical priming 2005 Hoey


WRAY 2012

2008-10

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corpus approaches to multiword strings 2008 Granger & Meunier,

Meunier & Granger

lexical bundles: “high frequency word strings” in corpora 2009 Biber

state of the art (Pawley) 2009 Corrigan, Moravcsik, Ouali & Wheatley

concgrams: “meaning shift unit” 2009 Cheng, Greaves, Sinclair & Warren

academic formulas list 2010 Simpson-Vlach & Ellis


SPEAKER-EXTERNAL VS SPEAKER INTERNAL DEFINITIONS

learner-external, or linguistic definitions of formulaic sequences

what is formulaic in the language the learner is

exposed to, such as idiomatic expressions or

collocations

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learner-internal, or psycholinguistic definition

what is formulaic within an individual learner and

therefore presents a processing advantage for

that learner

MYLES & CORDIER 2017







LEARNER-EXTERNAL APPROACH

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MYLES & CORDIER 2017

SPEAKER-EXTERNAL APPROACH

• formal linguistics: irregularity (semantic - pull your leg; syntactic - by and large)

• corpus linguistics: statistical frequency of clusters in corpora (salt and pepper)

• pragmatic functions (will you marry me?)

• graded, not categorical - no clear boundary FS vs non-FS

• preferential status of FS has consequences for storage and retrieval of sequences by NS

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SPEAKER-EXTERNAL APPROACH

1.corpus linguistics 2.psycholinguistics 3.educational perspective

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ELLIS, SIMPSON-VLACH & MAYNARD 2008


1. Corpus linguistics - statistical approach

• Gledhill 2000: phraseology of scientific English

• Gablasova et al 2017: compare association measures in general British National Corpus versus spoken subcorpora (& CANCODE)

• Paquot & Granger 2012: contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA) of International Corpus of Learner English

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“frequency-based” approach, which draws on quantitative

evidence about word co-occurrence in corpora

Myles & Cordier 2017

The studies so far have focused on identifying formulaic units

typical of a particular register or genre and described the

frequency of occurrence of these expressions according to

these settings

Gablasova, Brezina & McEnery 2017


1. Corpus linguistics - formal & functional approaches

• EAP research (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001; Hyland, 2004; Swales, 1990): determine functional patterns and constructions of different academic genres

• lexicographers (Hunston & Francis, 1996; Ooi, 1998): learner dictionaries focusing on usage more than definitions (Ellis et al 2008)

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combine phraseological and frequency-based

approaches: consider semantic unity/fixedness of form and

word co-occurrence => a clearer picture of

collocational patterns associated with certain groups of speakers or a certain type of word co-

selection

Glabasova et al. 2017


2. Psycholinguistics

• formulaic sequences have psycholinguistic reality (Pawley & Syder 1983; Sinclair 1991 - idiom principle)

• statistically defined and extracted FSs have “clear educational and psycholinguistic validity” (Ellis et al 2008)

• processing advantage? eye-tracking, grammaticality judgment, oral dictation tasks - mixed results

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combining data, methods, and models from language learning research and corpus linguistics has

potential for the investigation of language acquisition

link corpus evidence to psycholinguistic reality:

selection of a particular collocational measure should

always be preceded and motivated by a reflection on the dynamics of language production

and its connection to psycholinguistic processes

Glabasova et al. 2017


• idiomaticity and processing advantage are two distinct phenomena

• idiomaticity and processing advantage go hand in hand for NSs, but for L2 learners only in the case of transparent or very common FSs

• corpus-derived FSs are not systematically holistically stored and processed by NSs, let alone by L2 learners

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2. Psycholinguistics - conclusions


3. Educational perspective • Paquot & Granger 2008 frequency-based approach to FSs in corpora can

“inform the teaching of and material development for English for Academic Purposes”

• Ellis et al 2008 : EAP - L2 learners have to know specific idioms, collocations and lexical bundles to increase reading speed and comprehension and to write in a native-like fashion

• Even advanced language learners have considerable difficulty with collocations, often resulting from transfer of first language (L1) combinatorial restrictions, and the frequency of these problems shows that learners need instruction in these aspects of language

• The difficulty second language learners have in attaining nativelikeformulaic idiomaticity and fluency raises issues of instruction (Nesselhauf, 2003 Meunier & Granger, 2008; Schmitt, 2004; Ellis et al 2008)

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LEARNER-INTERNAL APPROACH

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MYLES & CORDIER 2017, WRAY 2002, 2008

SPEAKER-INTERNAL APPROACH

• a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar (Wray 2002)

• discontinuity: “gaps for inserted variable items” (Wray 2008) nice to ___ you (see/meet)

• a psycholinguistic FS is a multiword semantic/functional unit that presents a processing advantage for a given speaker, either because it is stored whole in their lexicon or because it is highly automatised (Myles & Cordier 2017)

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Whyte & SarréGERAS 17-03-17 14

CORDIER 2013, WRAY & FITZPATRICK 2008, 2010

TWO L2 STUDIES

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CORDIER 2013

FSS IN L2 FRENCH• 5 English L1 learners of French L2

• third year abroad - tested before and after 6 months

• 5 oral tasks (interview, story retell, discussion) 1h40 min total per speaker

• 3 measures - FSs, fluency, lexical diversity

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how do FSs help speed up speech

production?


CORDIER 2013FINDINGS

• all 5 participants made gains • increased fluency • increased lexical diversity • more FSs - average proportion 27%

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Whyte & SarréCORDIER 2013

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“27 % of the language of advanced L2 learners consists of formulaic units presenting a

processing advantage. Most of these sequences are grammatically-regular sequences and only a minority are

idiomatic in the traditional sense of the term.”

“A clear link was […] found between FS and formulaicity at the conceptual level: FS are

often resorted to when the learners express very commonplace conceptual content”


WRAY & FITZPATRICK 2008, 2010

FSS IN ESL

• artificial use of prefabricated material in conversation

• 6 Chinese or Japanese L1 students at UK university, L2 English

• preparation, practice and performance of conversations with native speakers

• 21 conversations, 227 ten-word utterances compared in Practice, Real conversation, and Delayed conditions

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what helps use of prefabricated material

for what effects?


WRAY & FITZPATRICK 2008, 2010

FSS IN ESL

• participants varied in their propensity to attempt utterances and in accuracy of recall

• neither willingness to attempt utterance nor accuracy linked to proficiency

• use in practice predicted use in real conversation

• failure to exploit conversational openings and gratuitous modification of target utterances

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Whyte & SarréFITZPATRICK & WRAY 2006

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Why should memorizing a word string and knowing that you can reproduce it accurately not be enough to ensure that it is

reproduced accurately? Why is there no clear relationship between accuracy and

proficiency?

the adult’s approach to language learning is constrained by both biological and cultural factors that combine to make it very difficult indeed to resist breaking down native-like

material into smaller units. The effect of doing so is to make it hard to remember just how the units were originally

combined, and in the process of making good the shortfall in this knowledge, the learner’s interlanguage rules must be

employed, compromising the accuracy of the reproduction.

FITZPATRICK & WRAY 2006

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Wray’s prognosis, in fact, is not hopeful for most learners, who are predicted to remain

victims of over-analysis – that is, unwrapping the packaging in the interests of more effective learning but, in the process, losing vital information about how to put the

constituent units back together

Whyte & Sarré







EAP TEACHING & LEARNING

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WRAY 2012

ESP TEACHING RESEARCH

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multiple rehearsals of useful multiword strings

1988 Gatbonton & Segalowitz

lexical approach 1993 Lewis

noticing formulaic language 2006 Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Stengers & Demecheleer

text memorisation and imitation 2007 Ding

use of prefabricated material in conversation

2010 Wray & Fitzpatrick

academic formulas list 2010 Simpson-Vlach & Ellis

Whyte & SarréGERAS 2017

LEARNER EXTERNAL• distinction between lexical

bundles determined by frequency and formulaic sequences which have psychological validity

• ICA of learner corpora (ICLE) takes a learner-external perspective and focuses on differences with NS usage of FS

• learners need FSs for fluency and native-like proficiency

• build learner dictionaries from usage studies rather than on definitions (Ellis et al 2008)

• incorporate writing guides based on errors in learner corpora (Gilquin et al. 2007)

• noticing activities (Boers et al 2006; Lindstromberg et al 2016)

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• L2 learners under/over/mis-use externally defined FSs compared with NSs

• learners use a substantial proportion of internally defined FSs, and these play a role in developing proficiency (fluency)

• practising prefabricated material of limited effectiveness

• L2 input and interaction may promote acquisition/automatisation of FSs


LEARNER INTERNAL

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DIDASP REPLICATION STUDY

DICTOGLOSS

• EAP text dictated at speed and reconstructed in groups

• with and without FS selected from Academic Formulas Lists (Simpson-Vlach & Ellis 2010)

• noticing of specific FS

• L2 production task

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Lyon 3 17/3/17GERAS 2017

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Shona [email protected]

Cédric Sarré[email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]
