“COMFORTABLE FOSSILIZATION” CHINESE EFL LEARNER’S ACQUISITION AND USE OF FORMULAIC SEQUENCES IN L2 WRITING

Autores

  • Zhisheng Wen Macao Polytechnic Institute, MACAU

Palavras-chave:

Formulaic sequences, lexical bundles, sentence frames, L1 transfer, comfortable fossilization, L2 writing

Resumo

The present study set out to investigate the knowledge and use of formulaic sequences in Chinese EFL learner‟s L2 writing. Adopting Alison Wray‟s definition (Wray, 2000, p.465), formulaic sequence was operationalized as “idioms, collocations and sentence frames (including connectives)”. Authentic samples written by 16 advanced EFL writers in China were collected and analyzed with a view to probing into their knowledge and use of formulaic sequences. The results indicated that a strong influence of these EFL learners‟ native language (L1) affected their knowledge and use of formulaic sequences in L2 writing. The study argues that such over-reliance on these incorrect formulaic sequences is likely to become what Skehan and Foster (2001) have called “comfortable fossilization”. Implications of these results for EFL writing instructions are discussed.

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