Teaching Formulaic Sequences in an English- Language Class: The Effects of Explicit Instruction Versus Coursebook Instruction

Le-Thi, Duyen; Rodgers, Michael; Pellicer‐Sánchez, Ana

doi:10.18806/tesl.v34i3.1276

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 61 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…As reported by Cai (2016), graduate students in an EMI setting can acquire considerable gains in receptive knowledge of formulaic language in rewriting tasks with the help of instruction on genre knowledge and genre-specific formulaic expressions. Le-Thi, Rodgers and Pellicer-Sánchez (2017) conducted an instructional study with low proficiency learners in Vietnam. They compared the effects of teaching FE explicitly through concordances versus traditional course book instruction.…”

Section: Vocabulary Instruction In Eapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eap Students' Perceptions About Concordance-Based Learning of Academic Vocabulary and Formulaic Expressions

Nergis

2021

FU Teach Learn Teach Ed

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This study aimed to explore perceptions about two vocabulary instruction programs as reported from a cohort of 37 English for academic purposes (EAP) students enrolled in an academic speaking course in an English medium (EMI) university. While one group received concordance-based instruction of formulaic expressions (FE) for 10 hours, one group received a similar instruction of single academic vocabulary (AV). Participants were interviewed after pedagogical intervention was finalized. Semi-structured interviews with each participant were audio-recorded and later transcribed verbatim for qualitative thematic analysis. Findings showed that both groups perceived vocabulary intervention they received to be useful for their academic needs and for enhancing their awareness about contextual use of academic vocabulary and formulaic expressions. As a third theme, the FE group emphasized the contribution of learning FE to their confident performance in L2 whereas the AV group differently reported that they enjoyed systematicity of AV instruction. Pedagogical implications of findings were discussed.

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Section: Vocabulary Instruction In Eapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eap Students' Perceptions About Concordance-Based Learning of Academic Vocabulary and Formulaic Expressions

Nergis

2021

FU Teach Learn Teach Ed

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“…As Cornell (1999, p. 7) suggested that "idioms involve a greater teaching and learning load than normal lexis, hence it is necessary to determine what idioms should receive special attention in a determined language course". It is therefore important that coursebooks writers and teachers draw the learners' attentions to the degree of transparency and salience in which guidelines for target idiom instruction as well as the number of frequency of these expressions should be highlighted in the learners' textbook materials (Thi, Rodgers & Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017). Overall, the present research does not only contribute to our understanding of how figurative meanings of collocations are learned incidentally but also offers new insights into the combined relationship between the learning of collocation and idiomatic expression, hence pinpointing an under researched area which likely deserves more attention from instructors and learners.…”

Section: Pedagogical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Learner’ Levels of Collocation Knowledge and Idiomatic Expressions: Exploring the Relationship of Acquisition of Two Items of Phraseology

Alharthi

2019

Int. J. Appl. Linguist. Engl. Lit.

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Whilst there is an ever growing bulk of research focused solely on either single word items or idioms (formulaic sequences as they are usually known) through explicit instruction, this article contributes towards a somewhat severely under-researched field in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context: the importance of incidental learning of collocation knowledge in comprehending idiomatic expressions within an authentic classroom setting in Saudi Arabia. To test this assertion, the study comprised a sample of 34 Arabic-speaking learners of English taking summer BA English courses. Learners’ familiarity of idiom was measured by a means of a background questionnaire which was administered at the beginning of the study. In addition, they were tested by examining the comprehension of the figurative meanings of 15 collocations and the non-compositionality meanings of 15 idiomatic expressions occurring in their EFL coursebook. Learners completed a cloze receptive task and an active recognition task in which each contained short texts composed of 15 collocations and 15 idiomatic expressions respectively. A closer examination of the data reveals that the learning of idiomatic expressions was significantly lower than that of collocations even when target idiomatic expressions were supplemented by contextualized information. It is argued that most learners’ attitudes towards the identification of idioms indicated that they are not familiar with multiword items such as idioms. Interestingly, the results demonstrated that the knowledge of collocations was effective in the learning of idioms. The article concludes by a thorough discussion of these results in relation to their pedagogical implications.

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“…Explicit teaching therefore can make up for the slow accumulation of MWEs from language input due to the low frequency of occurrences by directing the learners' attention to essential phrasal items. Second, previous research conducted in a Vietnamese context has also proved the effectiveness of the intentional learning condition (Ha, 2017;Le-Thi, Rodgers, & Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017;Tran, 2012). This call for a focus on explicit teaching is understandable in such an EFL context with very limited exposure to the target language.…”

Section: Intentional Learning and Awareness-raising Approachmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Durrant & Schmitt, 2010;Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017;Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013), and different teaching approaches (e.g. Le-Thi, Rodgers, & Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017, Lewis, 1993Pellicer-Sánchez, 2017). That said, the multi-faceted nature of MWEs still hinders applied linguistics researchers from reaching an optimal way to address this L2 acquisition challenge.…”

Section: Background and Rationale For The Current Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, in an EFL context where most of the teachers are non-native speakers and therefore might not be a fruitful source of teacher talk in English, what teachers can do best for their learners is to direct their attention to the most important aspects of vocabulary to acquire through explicit instructions. It was found in Le-Thi et al(2017) that explicit teaching combined with incidental exposure to MWEs occurring in textbooks proved more effective than when teachers only worked on the traditional instructions from textbook exercises.…”

Section: Intentional Learning and Awareness-raising Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Promoting discovery learning of formulaic language with the aid of online resources: A classroom-based study with intermediate EFL learners

Bui¹

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<p>This classroom-based study was motivated by the call for effective pedagogical paths to help learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) acquire multiword expressions (MWEs) in the target language. The central question addressed was how training EFL learners to identify MWEs in authentic texts (text-chunking) with the aid of online dictionaries and the online interface of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (http://corpus.byu.edu) affected their uptake and awareness of formulaic language. Learners’ discovery strategies during text-chunking activities were also investigated. The participants were 54 Vietnamese intermediate-level university students, randomly assigned to an experimental or comparison group. Over ten weeks, the experimental group (n=26) was asked to look for MWEs in texts, while the comparison group (n=28) used the same reading materials for content-related activities. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, this project analysed data gathered from a pre-test, an immediate post-test, a five-month delayed post-test, students’ classroom notes and audio-recorded discussions, and immediate and delayed questionnaires. Four main findings emerged from this study. Firstly, the practice of text-chunking benefited the students’ retention of the MWEs they identified in the texts. Whereas test results indicated that learning occurred in both groups, the experimental group demonstrated the greater gains in MWE knowledge. Secondly, experimental learners decided to investigate whether given word strings might be MWEs mostly if they were phrases (a) that they had previously seen, (b) that included known words combined in novel ways, and c) that included unknown content words within familiar structures such as verb + preposition, preposition + noun, or binomials (i.e. noun ‘and’ noun). Also, learners relied mostly on constituent words and language contexts to guess the meaning of newly-found MWEs. Thirdly, text-chunking practice with the aid of online dictionaries and COCA heightened the learners’ awareness of the importance of expanding their knowledge of formulaic language. This heightened awareness endured over the five-month gap between the end of the classroom experiment and the final questionnaire. The intervention also concentrated experimental learners’ MWE learning strategies on those practised during the treatment including underlining new MWEs, taking notes, looking them up in dictionaries and COCA, and discussing with peers. Fourthly, while the experimental group reported increased autonomy in strategy use to support their MWE acquisition, the use of online dictionaries and corpora still posed challenges for learners’ self-study. Stumbling blocks included how to choose the resources to consult and how to extract the necessary information from not-so-user-friendly interfaces. This thesis also discusses pedagogical and methodological implications of the findings so that teachers and learners in EFL contexts can make judicious use of text-chunking activities and online resources for the ultimate purpose of promoting learners’ autonomous MWE acquisition.</p>

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Teaching Formulaic Sequences in an English- Language Class: The Effects of Explicit Instruction Versus Coursebook Instruction

Cited by 15 publications

References 61 publications

Eap Students' Perceptions About Concordance-Based Learning of Academic Vocabulary and Formulaic Expressions

Eap Students' Perceptions About Concordance-Based Learning of Academic Vocabulary and Formulaic Expressions

The Learner’ Levels of Collocation Knowledge and Idiomatic Expressions: Exploring the Relationship of Acquisition of Two Items of Phraseology

Promoting discovery learning of formulaic language with the aid of online resources: A classroom-based study with intermediate EFL learners

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