This study reports a small-scale experiment that was set up to estimate the extent to which (i) the use of formulaic sequences (standardized phrases such as collocations and idiomatic expressions) can help learners come across as proficient L2 speakers and (ii) an instructional method that emphasizes ‘noticing’of L2 formulaic sequences can help language learners add such phrases to their linguistic repertoire. Participants were 32 college students majoring in English. Over the course of 22 teaching hours they were exposed to considerable quantities of authentic listening and reading materials. During exploration of those materials, the experimental students (N = 17) were made aware of standardized word combinations, while in the control group (N = 15) the traditional grammar-lexis dichotomy was upheld. Afterwards, the participants’ oral proficiency was gauged in an interview by two blind judges. Both perceived the experimental group as more proficient than the control group. Two other blind judges counted the number of word combinations in the interviews that they considered to be formulaic sequences. Their counts correlated well with the oral proficiency ratings, which suggests that helping learners build a repertoire of formulaic sequences can be a useful contribution to improving their oral proficiency.

In this study we examined the level of English proficiency children can obtain through out-of-school exposure in informal contexts prior to English classroom instruction. The second aim was to determine the input types that fuel children's informal language acquisition. Language learning was investigated in 780 Dutch-speaking children (aged 10–12), who were tested on their English receptive vocabulary knowledge, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Information about learner characteristics and out-of-school English exposure was gathered using questionnaires. The results show large language gains for a substantial number of children but also considerable individual differences. The most beneficial types of input were gaming, use of social media and speaking. These input types are interactive and multimodal and they involve language production. We also found that the various language tests largely measure the same proficiency component.

Instead of being completely arbitrary, the meaning of many idioms is ‘motivated’ by their original, literal usage. In an FLT context, this offers the possibility of presenting idioms in ways that promote insightful learning rather than ‘blind’ memorization. Associating an idiom with its etymology has been shown to enhance retention. This effect seems in accordance with Dual Coding theory, as the etymological association is likely to call up a mental image of a concrete scene which can be stored in memory alongside the verbal form. The present study explores the possibility of taking this technique beyond ‘mere’ mnemonics. We report a series of experiments that were set up with the participation of students of English in higher education. The results show that knowledge of the origin of idioms can effectively help learners comprehend their figurative meaning. Not only does the problem-solving task of inferring idiomatic meaning on the basis of etymological information appear feasible, it seems to facilitate recall, too, as predicted by Levels-of-processing theory in general. Finally, the results suggest that knowledge of the origin of certain idioms can help learners estimate whether they might be typical of informal discourse.

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