CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
2.4. L2 learners have difficulty with FSs 25
Given the pervasiveness of formulaic sequences in both spoken and written language and the roles they play in second language acquisition, L2 learners should develop a mastery of formulaic sequences in addition to individual words to reach desirable levels of proficiency. However, acquiring knowledge of FSs in an L2 is a path paved with obstacles both in ESL and EFL
settings. Bogaards (1996) proposes that it is because of the complexity of the lexical unit¸ not the word, that accounts for lexical errors and inadequacies in many advanced learners and for making vocabulary learning a very difficult and almost endless activity.
From a pedagogical perspective, it is not uncommon to see formulaic sequences receiving minimal attention both in textbooks and by language teachers, while single word items are usually the central concern. Vocabulary instruction centering on the word is probably one reason why L2 learners, even very advanced learners, do not display near-‐nativelike knowledge and proficiency in the use of formulaic sequences. Schmitt and Carter (2004) note that learners’ formulaic language use usually lags behind other aspects of their second language acquisition, and the reason might be lack of input or learners’ deliberate avoidance due to the degree of L1-‐ L2 similarity instead of intrinsic difficulty. However, research into learners’ use and knowledge of formulaic sequences so far has indicated significant difficulty that learners encounter. Many of these studies address the difficulty of EFL learners, but others also present strong evidence that even in an ESL setting, where learners are immersed in the second language input, learners continue to struggle with using FSs appropriately.
The underuse of collocations in ESL/EFL learners has been demonstrated in several studies. Erman (2009a) compares the use of collocations in the writings of native and non-‐native speakers of English in a university (ESL setting) and finds that collocational usage among non-‐ native speakers lags behind that of native speakers, resulting in less fluent, less directly comprehensible, and less pragmatically appropriate discourse. The same can be said about advanced learners’ passive knowledge of semantically opaque idioms which is not equivalent with that of native speakers, despite their comparable knowledge of low-‐frequency single words (Arnaud & Savignon, 1997). In another study by Erman (2009b), L2 learners underuse
collocations, resulting in less native-‐like writing. Over time, the frequency, accuracy and variation of learners’ use of formulaic sequences can improve; however, the corpus-‐derived data in Qi and Ding’s (2011) study show that despite this improvement found among Chinese speaking EFL learners, they still lag behind native speakers in terms of frequency and accuracy. Qi and Ding also find that not only did learners underuse formulaic sequences compared to native speakers, errors persisted over time (from the beginning to the end of an academic year): formulaic sequences containing prepositions and articles were most challenging for these learners.
Foster (2001) also provides evidence of the underuse of FSs by ESL learners based on data collected from native and non-‐native speakers in a classroom task. Native speakers use a greater variety of chunks in preplanned task performance, but planning only reduces non-‐native speakers’ use of chunks. Evidence for underuse of verb-‐noun collocations by non-‐native speakers is also found from a larger corpus of about 300,000 words of argumentative and descriptive essays (Laufer & Waldman, 2011), compared to that of native speakers in the LOCNESS corpus. Laufer and Waldman point out that learners of all proficiency levels make less use of selected verb-‐noun collocations, but their use increases with proficiency levels. However, errors persist even among advanced learners, which is consistent with Bahns and Eldaw’s (1993) finding of the productive knowledge of verb-‐noun collocation production of advanced EFL learners whose first language is German. Based on students’ performance on a translation task, Bahns and Eldaw find that more than half of the unacceptably translated lexical words were collocates. They also find that when students failed to find the intended collocates, they tended to paraphrase them. However, not all collocations allow paraphrasing, adding to advanced learners’ difficulty. Studying 810 adjective-‐noun collocations in 31 essays written by Russian
learners of English, Siyanova and Schmitt (2008) discovered that around 45% of these collocations were appropriate. Yet the non-‐native speakers demonstrated poorer intuition about the frequency of these collocations than the native speakers, and they were slower than native speakers in processing collocations. Research on collocational knowledge of learners from different L1 backgrounds, such as Jordanian (Farghal & Obiedat, 1995) and Hong Kong learners (Fan, 2009), also show that this knowledge among learners is not comparable with that of native speakers. Howarth (1998a) drawing on native speaker data (the Lancaster/Oslo/Bergen corpus) and essays written by nonnative speakers conclude that nonnative speakers experience difficulty differentiating between free collocations (e.g. blow a trumpet, under the table) and restricted collocations (e.g. blow a fuse, under attack), a finding similar to Howarth (1998b). They also have difficulty with figurative collocations (e.g. blow your own trumpet, under the microscope). Because of this lack in collocational knowledge, learners have to resort to several strategies, such as avoidance, transferring from L1 collocation and repetition. In analyzing the use of verb-‐noun collocations (e.g. take a break, shake one’s head) by advanced German-‐ speaking learners of English in free written production, Nesselhauf (2003) finds that the influence of L1 on triggering collocational errors goes far beyond what earlier (small-‐scale) studies have predicted. In another study on advanced German-‐speaking learners of English, out of more than 2,000 verb-‐noun collocations produced by these learners in argumentative and descriptive essays, about a quarter were judged unacceptable and a third inappropriate (Nesselhauf, 2007). Types of deviations range from the very frequent verb usage in collocations e.g. *make an experience (have), or noun e.g. *make a cut (distinction) to the less frequent structure type as in *set somebody an example (set an example for somebody). Avoidance is also found to be a strategy by intermediate Chinese learners of English in Liao and Fukuya (2004)
when it comes to the use of phrasal verbs. The study finds that intermediate learners use significantly fewer phrasal verbs than native speakers and more advanced learners in the multiple-‐choice test, recall test and translation test.
Other researchers have shown that language learners overuse some FSs but do not employ a wide range of FSs as native speakers do. As Granger (1998) notes, only a small number of familiar and safe sequences become learners’ repertoires or “islands of reliability” and they tend to overuse them. In her study that focuses on the use of amplifiers that modify adjectives (e.g.
bitterly cold, unbearably ugly), she finds that non-‐native learners significantly overused totally
and completely, suggesting that learners were ignorant of or reluctant to use other conventionalized amplifiers, such as bitterly in bitterly cold. Durrant and Schmitt (2009) criticize previous studies which claim that non-‐native language lacks formulaicity for failing to take account of frequency information and individual differences. In their study that accounts for these two factors, Durrant and Schmitt find that L2 learners tend to overuse high-‐frequency collocations but underuse low-‐frequency ones. In a longitudinal study by Li and Schmitt (2009), the writings of one Chinese student show that she overuses only a limited number of lexical phrases to the point where raters consider the usage non-‐native, although over time she has successfully learned to use more lexical phrases with better accuracy. DeCock, Granger, Leech, & McEnery (1998) point out that adult advanced EFL learners whose L1 is French do use prefabricated routines, sometimes more often than NSs. For example, they underuse most vagueness tags (e.g. and things like that, or something, and everything), but overuse one (and so on).
Some formulaic sequences even have an adverse effect on L2 learners’ reading comprehension. Gerald (2007) looks at how native and non-‐native speakers process formulaic sequences such as
racked his brains, tossed and turned, but to no avail in a whole written text and examine participants’ eye fixation patterns. While native speakers showed fewer eye fixations on words in the formulaic condition than in the baseline condition, the pattern for the nonnative speakers was reversed: there were a higher percentage of words fixated in the formulaic sequences than in the baseline condition, suggesting that they have difficulty processing these expressions. Gerald speculates that the semantic opacity of the formulaic sequences and the learners’ lack of prior exposure to these formulaic sequences bring out this adverse effect among non-‐native readers.