The study investigates the effects of corpus-based formulaic sequences learning on developing learners’ writing skills and attitudes. For this purpose, fifty-four high school students participated in the study and were divided into two groups. The experimental group learned formulaic sequences with the corpus-based method, while the control group learned the target items through the definition-centered method. The results of the study showed that no significant difference in writing ability was found between corpus-based formulaic sequences learning and traditional formulaic sequences learning. The corpus-based formulaic sequences learning showed a greater effect on improving grammatical accuracy of writing. The traditional formulaic sequences learning was effective in the acquisition of productive knowledge of formulaic sequences. The results of the survey questionnaire showed that the students showed a positive attitude toward corpus-based formulaic sequences learning, which may mean corpus-based learning can play an important role in increasing students’ motivation. These results may suggest that various corpus-based activities for EFL class need to be developed.

This study investigated the structural and functional differences between formulaic sequences in College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and SAT reading assessment texts. The results of the RANGE program showed that SAT used more diverse and difficult words compared to CSAT. The frequency analysis revealed that CSAT used more formulaic sequences than the SAT counterpart. This suggests that CSAT used more repeated expressions, whereas SAT used diverse vocabulary items. The structural analysis showed that noun phrases were the most dominant in CSAT, whereas prepositional phrases were pervasive in SAT. The functional analysis showed that both corpora relied heavily on referential expressions. The results indicate that referential bundles are dominantly used in institutional writing (Biber & Barbieri, 2007). In accordance with the previous studies, the results suggest that high frequency formulaic sequences can be different according to the register. In CSAT, connectives and discourse organizers were prevalent. This may be due to the characteristics of question types in CSAT. The results may indicate that formulaic sequences in texts are partly influenced by the characteristics of a register.

The present study reports the findings of a study that analyzed the use of formulaic sequences in an NNS corpus (i.e., EFL teaching demonstration data) and an NS corpus (i.e., MICASE data). In order to investigate the structural and functional aspects of formulaic expressions in English, the most frequent 4-word formulaic expressions were identified and classified both structurally and functionally. The result of the analysis demonstrates Korean EFL learners’ overuse of the formulaic sequences. In other words, the repeated use of the formulaic sequences resulted in the high frequency of formulaic sequences in the learners’ data. The analysis of formulaic sequences by the structural subcategories shows the high frequency of the clausal expressions, which is one of the major characteristics of spoken discourse. The present study also reports the results of the functional analysis of the formulaic sequences, which indicate that both native speakers and learners mainly employed formulaic sequences to express epistemic and modality stance.

This study examines whether formulaic sequences might be stored and retrieved as wholes in a holistic fashion rather than analytically. Another goal is to see whether the processing of L2 sequences is affected by L2 proficiency, grammaticality and length of expressions. Grammaticality judgment task was conducted and data was collected from Korean L2 English learners of low- and intermediate-level of proficiency. First, results showed that formulaic sequences were responded more rapidly and accurately than nonformulaic sequences. This provides additional support for the claim that formulaic sequences are stored and processed as single lexical units even in L2 speakers' mental lexicon. Second, the formulaicity effect was constant at both levels, indicating that formulaic sequences are acquired and processed from the early stage of L2 development. Finally, it was found that grammatical sequences were processed more quickly and accurately than ungrammatical ones and that shorter expressions were judged faster and more accurately than longer ones, implying more efficient processing and less memory load for shorter and grammatical expressions. Building on the results in the present study, we propose a formal account for the quicker and accurate processing of formulaic sequences with reference to psycholinguistic model and processing constraints.