Recurrent formulaic sequences in the speech and writing of the Lithuanian learners of English

• Autores: Jone Grigaliuniene, Rita Jukneviciene
• Localización: Twenty years of learner corpus research: looking back, moving ahead / Sylviane Granger (ed. lit.), Gaëtanelle Gilquin (ed. lit.), Fanny Meunier (ed. lit.), 2013, ISBN 978-2-87558-199-0, págs. 211-222
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The present article reports an investigation of recurrent formulaic sequences (FSs) in the speech and writing of Lithuanian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Evidence from corpus research has shown that language makes an extensive use of recurrent multi-word units whose successful acquisition contributes to the naturalness of expression and is thus very important in language teaching and learning. The aim of this study is to identify and describe the recurrent FSs in the spoken and written English of Lithuanian EFL learners both quantitatively and qualitatively, and to check whether the current hypothesis that FSs are more frequent in speech than in writing is applicable to the Lithuanian EFL learner language as well. The data for the research comes from the Lithuanian component of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), viz. LICLE, and a pilot version of LINDSEI-LITH, the Lithuanian component of the Louvain International Database of Spoken Interlanguage. The findings of the study show that although the speech of Lithuanian EFL learners is more formulaic than their written language, there is a considerable overlap between spoken and written language in terms of formulaicity. The learners have built a core set of FSs which recur both in speech and writing. The most frequent FSs in writing are expressions of discourse organization while high-frequency FSs in spoken language, which often appear in clusters of several FSs, usually indicate the speaker's hesitation and uncertainty.