Dr. Sarvenaz Hatami, California State University, USA
In both L2 research and pedagogy, individual words have been considered the basic lexical unit; this is not surprising, because individual words are convenient to identify, teach, and work with (Schmitt, 2010). However, there is a growing awareness that language users do not always process language word by word, but also make use of formulaic sequences. In fact, it has been estimated that formulaic sequences constitute more than 50% of spoken and written English discourse (Erman & Warren, 2000) and that these sequences are strongly associated with fluent, communicative, native-like language production (Schmitt, 2010).This means that in order to appear proficient, EFL/ESL learners also need to gain mastery of these sequences. However, formulaic sequences are particularly difficult for L2 learners to acquire (Scarcella, 1979; Yorio, 1989), which further emphasizes the need to focus on and teach these sequences in the L2 classroom. This presentation, based on previous research findings on formulaic sequences in the L2 literature, provides a series of steps and strategies for the teaching of formulaic sequences through all four language skills in the L2classroom.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.LLLD.IR), 2-3 February 2017, Iran-Ahwaz.