Chapter 3 Method
In this chapter we will discuss the present language study and the methods involved in executing the study. We will first describe the participants of the study in Section 3.1. In Section 3.2 and 3.3 we will introduce the instruments and the
procedures involved in the study. Next, section 3.4 sets up the principles of formulaic sequences instruction. To specify our instruction design, we present an introductory activity and nine instruction techniques in section 3.5.
3.1 Participants
Forty-eight 2nd-year female vocational high school students in Taipei were involved in the experimental group (Class A). Even though on average they had learned English for 5.6 years, they were still classified as beginners since their English proficiency was still low at the time of the study. Before the treatment, only 55.1% of the participants (twenty-seven of them) had passed the fourth level of the English proficiency test held by the Chinese Business Vocational Education Council.
This level is approximately just below junior high English proficiency.
In the study period, the experimental group received 6 sessions of English class every week (50 min for each session) and the course was under the title of “General English” taught by the researcher herself.
As for the control group, since every comparable class in that school was assigned to different instructors, we arranged two pseudo-control groups as a
substitution (Class B and C). These two classes possessed a similar proficiency level as the experimental group.
The difference between the experimental group and the control groups lay in fact that each class has different instruction from different instructors. According to our interviews with the two control groups’ instructors, formulaic sequences were neither consistently nor consciously involved in their regular teaching; instead, grammatical explanation and word-by-word translation of the texts were the two dominant teaching methods in the two control groups. In other words, only the experimental group was undertaking formulaic sequences instruction. Our hypothesis is that if the post-test demonstrates that the treatment group makes significant progress relative to the other groups, it would be as a result from the teaching approach that the
experimental group received.
3.2 Instruments
Two kinds of instruments were used to collect data in this study: two tests and a questionnaire. The two tests included a pre-test and a post-test used to evaluate the participants’ progress in listening and reading. The two tests are identical and were taken from an official trial version of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) for beginners (http://www.gept.org.tw/download-1.htm, see Appendix A). Although the test was posted on the official GEPT website, according to our survey, none of the participants had been exposed to the test before the study. In the original test, there were three sections: listening, reading and writing. To meet the purpose of the present study, we adopted two sections only: the listening section which had thirty five test items, and the reading section which had thirty.
In addition to the tests, the other kind of instrument was a questionnaire. We adapted the questionnaire from Lin (2002) and Tseng (2002) (see Appendix D) to explore the participants’ learning behaviors and attitudes toward the formulaic
teaching approach (an approach that was new to them). The questionnaire was written in Chinese (the subjects’ mother tongue) to make sure that the subjects understood the questions completely.
3.3 Procedures
The experiment started on Sep. 1st, 2005 and ended towards the latter half of April, 2006. The formulaic sequences instruction lasted for about 7 months (29 weeks) to ensure that the treatment was long enough for the participants to acquire a new learning strategy.
At the beginning of the formulaic sequences instruction, an introductory activity was conducted (see Appendix B and C) only with the experimental group. During the activity, learners were told the efficacy and advantages of learning formulaic
sequences. However, they were not informed of the purpose of the new way of instruction; that is to say, they were not aware that they were involved in an experimental study.
After the introductory activity, formulaic sequences instruction was constantly employed in the experimental group’s English classes; in contrast, the two
pseudo-control groups received no deliberate instruction on formulaic sequences. Not knowing their role as control groups, the control groups had English class as usual.
The pre-test was held on Sep. 6th, 2005 for the experimental group, and within 4 days for the two pseudo-control groups, students were given 65 minutes to complete the pre-test. The three groups all took the same test: the GEPT official sample for beginners. For comparison among the groups, the listening and the reading sections were scored by the number of correct answers.
The post-test, given at the end of April, 2006, was also administrated to all the
three groups. The post-test was the same official GEPT sample as the one used in the pre-test. Using the identical set of tests made the results in the pre- and post-tests comparable. Since there was a seven-month interval, the memory effect was diminished.
After the seven-month experimental instruction, a questionnaire was given only to the experimental group at the beginning of May after the post-test.
Table 3.1 Temporal Procedures for Data Collection
Task Date of the task The participants Introductory activity Sep. 1st, 2005 The experimental group Formulaic sequences
instruction
From Sep. 1st to the end of April, 2006
The experimental group
Pre-test Sep. 6th ~ Sep. 9th, 2005
The experimental group and the two pseudo-control groups Post-test The end of April, 2006 The experimental group and the
two pseudo-control groups Questionnaire The beginning of May,
2006
The experimental group
3.4 Principles of formulaic sequences instruction
3.4.1 Teach real language, not “TEFLese”
In the past, teachers usually made their own language examples and presented them to the students. The language used in a language classroom is then criticized for its artificiality—it is “not what people really say” (Lewis, 1997, p.10). Thus, students often have difficulty exploring the underlying patterns from those poor examples (Sun and Wang, 2003).
The combination of corpora and concordancers provides a promising future in
the field of language teaching and learning by efficiently displaying ample authentic examples of a specific word or phrase (Harvey and Yuill, 1997; Lewis, 2000; Halliday et al., 2004). It is a basic tool used to highlight typical formulaic usages and syntactic patterns. It allows learners to discover patterns and adjust their misconceptions by observing naturally occurring examples in the real world (Hill, 2000; Gries and Stefanowitsch, 2004). Additionally, formulaic phrases gathered by these tools provide a semantic profile of a word, thus enabling the learner to gain insight into the
semantic and prosodic meanings of a word (Huang, 2003; Orpin, 2005). Specific demonstration of the way that corpus examples are manipulated in the present study will be provided later in section 3.5.2.1.
3.4.2 Modify the material to make it teachable and learnable
By engaging the students in activities like observing corpus examples and
Monolingual Dictionary and Collocation Dictionary, we expect to impart the students with learning strategies that further encourage autonomous learning in the future.
Some teachers, assuming that limited exposure to formulaic sequences gives learners limited formulaic knowledge, hold the mistaken belief that the more authentic the example is, the better (Marton, 1977, in Bahns, 1993; Bahns and Eldaw, 1993).
Emphasizing the fact that concordances are useful supplementary materials for learning, we may be in danger of neglecting something important—never overuse them! Too many examples as well as examples that are too long, overwhelm learners and then ruin their appetite before even diving into the chunking game (Wray, 2002).
“The more types of information added to EFL dictionaries, the bulkier they become and the more difficult it becomes for target users to locate what they are looking for” (McAlpine & Myles, 2003, p.82). For learners to derive rules and extend
them, good examples should not only be authentic but clear and precise as well (Weinert, 1995). In the present study, we took three measures to make the material teachable and learnable. The first measure is that only the material that met the learners’ needs were selected to avoid the danger of overload (Biber et al. 1994;
Harwood, 2002). The second measure was that we deliberately arranged the order of the examples that we presented. The more easily chunked ones came earlier (Lewis, 1997). The third measure was that we extracted only part of the corpus sentences to make our focused sequences stand out (Lewis, 1997).
The following concordance extracts with the chunk look forward to from the British National Corpus is a possible demonstration of appropriate examples for learners to observe.
1. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
2. Thank you again for your help and I look forward to seeing you on 13 June.
3. …we look forward to trying to find an easier path to tread.
4. I look forward to seeing you perform.
5. We look forward to his participation in our affairs.
6. Mother liked him and began to look forward to his visits…
7. I'll look forward to it.
8. …they could look forward to their retirement with complete peace of mind.
9. I look forward to many more exciting developments in the future.
In the above examples regarding look forward to, the teaching focus was on the last element to, which functioned as a preposition. To specify its relationship with the neighbors, we led the learners’ attention to the word that follows the chunk.
In the first step, we suggested that learners look closely at the first four examples, which all demonstrated the pattern “look forward to + GERUND.” We invited the
learners to consider the peculiar behavior of to and compare it with love to and want to, which they were already familiar with. We raised questions such as “What’s the difference between the two to’s in I love to play tennis and I look forward to working in your company? What makes the words following the to’s in the two sentences act differently?” We expected the learners to be able to notice the to in I love to play tennis was followed by the base form of a verb, but the to in I look forward to working in your company was followed by a verb in its gerund form.
Afterwards, the instructor moved forward to ask the students to observe the elements following to in examples 5 to 10. The words that came after the to’s were noun phrases such as his participation, his visit, it, their retirement, and many more exciting developments respectively. Now we expected the learners to conclude that the use of to in the prefabricated chunk look forward to is a preposition.
Though corpus data helps enrich a learner’s knowledge of language, it is
remarkable that corpus data in no way constitutes a pedagogical quick-fix (Harwood, 2002). Corpus sentences are raw data. They “require adjustment and modification before it can be allowed to serve pedagogical ends” (Harwood, 2002, p.142).
Examples work for learners only when they are manageable (Lewis, 1997).
3.4.3 Make the target chunks noticed
In a fifty-minute class session, learners may be exposed to more than fifty formulaic chunks. Not all chunks are equally important. It is the teacher’s
responsibility to select what is most useful for learners (Lewis, 1993). Teachers play the role of a learning-manager in formulaic sequences instruction. In this study, the guidelines we adopted for determining the target learning chunks were based on the goals in the syllabus, the recurrence of the phrases in a text, the immediate need for
communication, and the learners’ long-term goals of learning the language. Goals for learning a language included language use for traveling, for an entrance exam, for telephone conversations, and other situations.
Even though learners were provided with the exact target input, they might not necessarily notice the target sequences in our syllabus. To make sure the learners really notice the aimed chunks, in addition to giving broad and extensive exposure, the instructor should highlight the target chunks (Woolard, 2000). In the present study, the teacher used various techniques such as encouraging the students to keep a lexical notebook, to have small-group brainstorming on newly learnt sequences, or asking students to underline formulaic phrases in a text.
3.4.4 Recycle and revisit
Teaching vocabulary without incorporating necessary recycling is a waste of efforts (Nation, 1990; Harwood, 2002). Effective learning is the result of repeated exposure to the material over a given period of time. Teachers have to design some activities as well as monitor the learners’ growth to ensure that the chunks are visited regularly.
Constrained by limited time and energy, many language teachers merely cast out the same task to the learners and claim that that is what recycling is all about.
However, repetition can is only a part of recycling, it does not represent the whole.
“Doing the same thing twice is widely considered time-wasting and potentially boring” (Lewis, 1997, p.51). The learner’s interest can be engaged only if recycling is done in an interesting and refreshing way (Harwood, 2002).
We used a variety of circular techniques in our study to keep the lessons fresh and worth revisiting. For example, we used underlining formulaic sequences after we introduced target chunks on a textbook topic,; we used open-book quizzes at the end
of a class session to refresh the newly taught material; we used dialogue writing to encourage the participants to compose with the learned sequences; we used summary writing to encourage the students to read the taught text again, list the prefabricated chunks in it, and then summarize the paragraphs. The detailed description of our recycled activities will be offered in section 3.5.2.
3.5 Formulaic sequences instruction design
3.5.1 The introductory activity
In our design of the teaching activities, one predominant view was adopted to enhance better acquisition of formulaic chunks: raising learners’ awareness (Bahns &
Eldaw, 1993; Lewis, 2000; Tang, 2004). The participants had not come across the concept of formulaic sequences in their previous learning experiences. The fact that formulaic sequences had not been consistently taught resulted in a learner’s
insensitivity to their presence. To bring awareness to the conventionalized chunks represented the first step in formulaic sequences learning.
Before the formal formulaic sequences instruction, the learners were requested to do an introductory task aimed to draw the learners’ attention to the existence and functions of formulaic sequences. The activity was adapted from the appendix of the Longman Collocation Dictionary about using animals to make metaphors in both English and Chinese (see Appendix B).
A majority of previous studies ranked first language transfer as the most salient factor that interfered with language learners’ formulaic sequences performance. We made use of this inevitable tendency, the tendency to assume the features of the first language and apply them to a second language (Lewis, 2000). The introductory
activity was characterized by starting with the participants’ mother tongue and then moving to English. It helped learners lower their anxiety and made the task more approachable. Moreover, by the combination of the two languages in the task, learners had a better chance to realize that features were shared between their native language and the target language.
In the beginning of the activity, the participants were asked to think of the possible animals for Mandarin metaphoric expressions. After that, they brainstormed the English counterparts of the metaphors. Comparing the different metaphors with animals in Mandarin and English, they then became aware that similar concepts existed in the two languages. However, the different languages used different ways to express certain ideas.
We chose the animal metaphor activity to raise awareness for two reasons. One is that the participants were still teenagers; the animal-related content could be fun and attract their attention. The other reason is that the recruited expressions followed a repeated formulaic frame as (busy) as (a bee). Since the pattern was one of the learning aims in the following lesson in the textbook, this task could be a wonderful transition. The task was expected to leave the impression that the repeatedly occurring chunks were not just an interesting coincidence, but that the habitual use of some fixed sequences was so common that it became a phenomenon worth noticing.
To draw further support from the introductory activity, following the animal metaphor lesson, we explicitly introduced the importance and the functions of learning formulaic sequences to make the participants motivated toward the coming new teaching and learning approach (see Appendix C).
3.5.2 Instruction techniques for formulaic sequences
A variety of activities are welcome to arouse learners’ interests, and more
importantly, the activities need to run in a cycle to inculcate effective ways to cope with language learning (Kojic-Sabo & Lightbown, 1999; Nesselhauf & Tschichold, 2002). The following techniques were recycled in our instruction to the experimental group for seven months: corpus examples, monolingual dictionary and collocation dictionary, underlining formulaic sequences, open-book quizzes, dialogue writing, summary writing, pause reading (recording), paragraph dictation, and the lexical notebook. We hope that the formulaic sequences instruction can improve the learners’
overall English proficiency. In this study we took listening and reading as indicators of their progress. Though we focused on listening and reading, in order to facilitate general language ability, our formulaic sequences instruction was never confined to receptive skills only. During the experiment period, the participants were not deprived of opportunities to learn the productive skills. For example, pause-reading,
translation, dialogue writing, paragraph dictation, etc. were all basic but productive exercises. Learners needed some pressure to develop their production skills in order to assure natural language acquisition (Wong-Fillmore, 1976; Krashen and Scarcella, 1978). They became motivated to learn when they felt the need to use what they were learning. Also, by observing the learners’ output, the instructor could directly monitor learners’ development. Therefore, the nine techniques combined receptive skills and productive skills and emphasis on each skill was evenly distributed.
3.5.2.1 Corpus examples
A large corpus, which provides a fuller and more reliable picture of the meanings and usages of words/expressions, permits language users to make reliable
generalizations about language use (Todd, 2001; Orpin, 2005; Wang, 2005). The concordance lines adopted in this study were extracted from the online British National Corpus (at http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html) and the Gutenberg
Corpus (at http://140.122.83.196/~hjchen/colocation2/default.htm). The used corpus sentences were carefully selected to meet the learners’ proficiency and to specify certain learning objectives. In our regular formulaic sequences instruction, the corpus examples were employed to effectively demonstrate their functions in various aspects of language use—the lexical aspect, the syntactical aspect, and the pragmatic and discourse aspect (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992).
Online lexical resources furnish learners with not only a greater quantity of definitional information and usage examples, but also much more flexible search paths (Cumming et al., 1994; McAlpine & Myles, 2003). Other than straight-forward example sentences, online corpus is equipped with software that can compute the frequency of certain strings, which exemplifies the acceptability and prominence of the phrase in real communication (Harvey and Yuill, 1997). This facilitates the learners’ detection of lexical collocations (Poole, 2004).
For instance, due to Chinese EFL learners’ heavy reliance on their native
language in composing English sentences, instead of using taking medicine, they may produce errors like *eat medicine or *have medicine in their compositions (Tseng, 2002). But if the learners are showed the corpus evidence of the collocate of medicine, they will be shocked by the marked frequency difference (see Table 3.2 below). In the corpus data, the frequency of take medicine is respectively 1.5 times and 149 times over that of have medicine and eat medicine, respectively. It is obvious that medicine conventionally co-occurs with take and have. Observing this, the learners would realize that their use of “eat medicine” is non-nativelike, relatively unacceptable and not communicative. By viewing the impressive numbers, they are likely to correct their errors and adopt the more widely used alternatives.
Table 3.2 The frequency of verbs collocating medicine in the Gutenberg corpus
Frequency word 326 use 149 take
99 have 77 give 58 study
…… ……
1 eat
Besides the observation for lexical collocations, corpus examples can be used to portray syntactical collocations. Students used to be trapped by dull and complicated explanations of grammar rules. Now if they follow the
Observe-Hypothesize-Experiment steps proposed by Lewis (1993), learners’ active involvement may lead to better understanding and longer retention (Chao, 2005).
Learners can observe corpus examples and find that word usage patterns are amazingly similar.
The following is an example of grammatical knowledge on the phrases: be afraid to (walk in dark streets)/be afraid of (doing bungee jumping ).
1. If you don't know the answer, don't be afraid to say so.
2. I am afraid to tell you who I am.
3. Everyone was afraid to make a mistake.
4. Indeed she was afraid to plan or picture a different future of any kind.
5. Kendall was never afraid to spend money……
6. You don't like her because she's a woman who's not afraid to show what she wants.
7. He is afraid of falling.
8. I was afraid of hurting people's feelings.
9. People are afraid of losing their dignity.
10. She discovered that she was afraid of getting close, afraid of being betrayed, afraid of finding that……
11. We're all afraid of being thrown out of the club.
12. He's not afraid of meeting ghosts.
In the past, the above two patterns would be deductively presented as rules as
“be afraid to verb” vs. “be afraid of V-ing” for students to memorize. The
mathematic-like “formula” did not work as a wonder drug. Actually students were usually confused with the seemingly tongue twister-like rules. With the concordance examples as an assistant, students are encouraged to make comparison of the
behaviors of the two similar sequences and further induce some syntactical rules on their own. In this way, they are not crammed with rules but are inducing rules from authentic language.
Lexical and syntactical collocations can be directly inspected from corpus sentences. More extendedly, authentic corpus examples in meaningful contexts make it possible for the participants to explore deeper vocabulary knowledge of a given word or expression. The authentic corpus examples tell more than pure definition of a given expression. They easily and clearly demonstrate the pragmatic knowledge of a fixed sequence. Through corpus examples, represented in the following table, learners could detect pragmatic differences between two similar expressions (House, 1996;
Moudraia, 2001).
1. I would like to welcome Frances to the team and to thank her for
“volunteering” to promote the Johnson Matthey Mac Challenge personal fund raiser!!……
2. A lot of our fans traveled here and I would like to apologize to them.
3. I would like to suggest that you take a piece of paper and rule it as follows……
4. We would like to guarantee that our flights will never be delayed and in fact the vast majority of flights do depart on time.
For example, would like to and want to are sometimes treated as synonyms, and thus become mutually exchangeable. Take example 4 from the above table for instance, a representative of an airline is trying to convince the public or its
passengers of its good service. It is semantically possible to replace “We would like to guarantee……,” with “We want to guarantee …….” However, the pragmatic
information related to would like is then missing.
Based on the observation of the above four corpus examples, it is obvious that the subjects of would like to are all in the stance of first person (I, I, I, and we).
Besides, interpersonal interaction is commonly involved in the four examples, serving the functions of welcome, apology, suggestion, and guarantee, respectively. All of these are characteristic of service encounters. The observations suggest that the use of the prefabricated string would like to imply politeness on the speaker’s part in relation to the listener.
The inferences are supported by the Macmillan English Dictionary (2002), which says that would like to is usually used to state what you want politely. The two
expressions, would like to and want to, are semantically similar, but the former is characterized as being more euphemistic. This kind of pragmatic difference is more apparent when accompanied with real language.
3.5.2.2 Monolingual dictionary and collocation dictionary
In the study, one of the ultimate goals was to show the participants ways to learn a language even when they were out of the classroom. Therefore, we tried to teach the learners to use dictionaries as a powerful learning resource. The participants were required to use a dictionary as an ancillary in-class learning tool.
In spite of the fact that most dictionaries offer large amounts of examples, the examples do not always work effectively for EFL learners. Most learners look up words simply to check spelling and meaning (Fischer, 1994; Harvey and Yuill, 1997).
In this way, they are usually impeded by cultural-specific or idiomatic expressions in reading. In writing, they make collocational errors (McAlpine & Myles, 2003).
Merely including example sentences in a learner’s dictionary does not serve the needs of the ESL users (Jackson, 1985; Nesi, 1996; McAlpine & Myles, 2003). Many times, these examples do not fully illustrate the use of a word and do not highlight syntactic relations among the words in a sentence,
To compensate for the weakness of traditional dictionaries (not lexically and syntactically contextualizing word use to a satisfactory extent) we guided our participants to “alternative dictionaries”, which contained more knowledge on word usage, collocations, idioms, syntactic notes, and corpus-based examples. The two alternative dictionaries used in this study were the Longman Collocation Dictionary and the Macmillan English Learners’ Dictionary.
We used the Longman Collocation Dictionary for the first two months. The dictionary, which is compacted with Mandarin translations, was regarded as a suitable supplement in the beginning of instruction since the bi-lingual entries satisfied the needs of learners with low proficiency. Since they had not been familiar with the concept of formulaic sequences and collocations, the use of the collocation dictionary could raise the learners’ awareness of the significance of formulaic sequences. It
revealed to them a new perspective of language use.
After two months of training in using the bi-lingual collocation dictionary, the subjects were pushed to change to use the monolingual one, the Macmillan English Learners’ Dictionary. The dictionary was chosen for its three-fold distinctive characteristics. One was that every word explanation is clear and simple. Word explanations were limited to the most common 2,500 words, so our low proficient subjects could grasp the rough meaning of the target word by themselves. Another characteristic was that over 100,000 references with 30,000 idioms and phrases were included, and the number of collocations was even larger. The special foci on the words were highlighted. The other characteristic of the dictionary was that over 80,000 real-life spoken and written example sentences were included to show learners how and when a word is used in real life communication.
3.5.2.3 Underlining formulaic sequences
Underlining formulaic sequences, which was a typical activity conducted in formulaic sequences instruction, helped to highlight the unitariness of a chunk (Lewis, 1993, 1997, 2000; Tseng, 2002). It also re-enforced the learners’ application of the chunks in real language use.
At the beginning of a lesson, there was always a free discussion over the topic of the lesson, where formulaic sequences relevant to the text were introduced. Later, the participants were asked to scan the reading text and underline the possible formulaic sequences. By underlining the sequences, learners became aware of language chunks, which promoted retention (Liu, 2000b). Afterwards, the participants then contributed their underlined expressions. The whole class discussed the semantic meaning, the syntactic behavior, and the appropriate contexts for the underlined sequences.
3.5.2.4 Open-book quizzes
The number of formulaic sequences taught in one class can be huge. The learners may be drowned with information if there is no repeated exposure to the targeted learning objectives. The Open-book quizzes, developed in response to the above concern, was conducted to highlight certain chunks and also to refresh the learners’
memory. The quizzes were given in the last seven minutes of a class session as a review task. Our intention was to get the targeted learning items noticed, so the activity was not designed to be carried out as a formal stressful test but as an open-book one.
The questions centered around ten prefabricated chunks that had been taught during the class period. By doing this, we helped narrow down the information to an amount that the learners were able to digest in a fifty-minute class period. The question types were mostly translation, either to fill in the blanks or to complete sentences. In the blank-filling part of the test, the questions were similar to the phrases or sentences found in the textbook but not exactly the same. These questions were to help encourage the participants to learn by analogy and to make some modification and creation with the formulaic frames. In the sentence completion test, the learners were usually given a sentence head and then asked to compose their thoughts and make their own sentence. For example, learners were offered a sentence head like
“Taipei is famous for……” and then they inserted something like “Taipei 101, the highest building in the world”, completing the sentence with their own ideas (Taipei is famous for Taipei 101, the highest building in the world.). Using semi-controlled sentence-making, the learners’ originality was not ignored and the learning objectives of the teachers or school authorities were attended to as well.
3.5.2.5 Dialogue writing
Regular daily communication is not processed analytically even though it could be. Actually, formulaic sequences take the lead. There are four types of prefabricated chunks usually used in maintaining a conversation (Pawley and Syder, 1983; Richards, 1983): (1) conventional openers: How are you? (2) routine formulae, like Check, please (used when one wants to request a bill at a restaurant, (3) ceremonial formulae, used in ritualized interactions, such as After you, and How nice to meet you, and (4) memorized clauses: unlike novel utterances, these are pre-programmed. The
memorized clauses are produced and stored as complete units and run off almost automatically in speech production (Sosa & MacFarlane, 2002; Wang, 2005). For low-proficient learners, like the participants of the present study, the short-cut to become expressive and comprehensible is to use conventionalized ready-made phrases and sentences (Schmidtm 1983). This helps them exercise the language with fluency and accuracy (Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992: 32; Wray, 2002).
In the present study, the aim of the dialogue writing activity was to apply what the learners had learned into real use, and let them experience the needs for formulaic sequences in real exchanges. After every three lessons in the participants’ textbook is a dialogue. The dialogues were usually full of various formulaic sequences, such as What have you been doing? By the way,… You did an excellent job on (your biology report), How may I help you? Are there (any seats) available for (the show tonight)?, etc.. The participants were required to use the formulaic sequences that they had learned or found (inclusive of those that had been learned earlier before the
instruction) to compose a situated conversation. The task was either done individually or in small groups (two or three members) depending on the learners’ preference.
Dialogue writing sample (from the participants):
Asking and Giving Directions
Directions: 有一位外國人在中正紀念堂前把你攔了下來. 他想要去臺北 101,
請你給他一些指示: (1) 要搭什麼車? (2) 要花多久的時間?
A foreigner stops you in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. He would like to know how to get to Taipei 101.
A: Excuse me. Could you please tell me how to get a bus to Taipei 101?
B: Let’s see. You can take bus number 20.
A: How long does it take to get there?
B: It takes about 20 minutes from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to the Taipei 101.
A: O. K. I see. Thank you. Have a nice day.
B: You’re welcome. Good luck.
3.5.2.6 Summary writing
Exercises and activities offer the students opportunities to internalize newly-acquired knowledge (Skehan, 1996; Willis & Willis, 1996). The summary writing activity was a follow-up activity of reading. After the text reading, the instructor selected two or three successive paragraphs from the text for the participants, working in pairs, to write a summary about. The summary had to be around 100-150 words. We suggested that the participants treat lexis as the core and grammar as an assistant to glue the chunks together into acceptable expressions.
The participants were advised to first discuss the content and the main ideas of the chosen paragraphs. They were then to list the formulaic sequences on a piece of
paper and to summarize the text with reference to the listed chunks. The teacher collected each pair’s work and provided them with feedback, focusing mainly on the appropriateness of the chunks used and the completeness of the summary. Then, the participants rewrote the summary based on the feedback.
3.5.2.7 Paragraph dictation
Based on Lewis (2000), Pawley and Syder (2000) and Wray (2002), features such as overall fluency, intonation pattern and changes in speed of articulation are all potential pointers to a stretch of prefabricated language. To encourage participants to experience language usage, we conducted the paragraph dictation activity.
After teaching a reading text in the textbook, the instructor chose one of the paragraphs, which had a number of learning targets, as the material for dictation. The learners were asked to read through the chosen paragraph again. At the same time, they could write down 10 to 15 words (depending on the length of the text) occurring in the text on a sheet of paper as their notes.
Later, the teacher read the paragraph chunk by chunk with pauses, and the learners wrote down what they heard. In this way, the participants were listening to and writing the language in units of prefabricated chunks. Although they might not be able to hear clearly every single word, the pauses gave the students clues. They were asked to figure out the vague words by inferring from the heard part of the phrase.
Therefore, the students were not just taking dictation, but they recalled and reconstructed the text. The text would be read twice. After the second paragraph reading from the teacher, the students referred back to their textbook to check the original paragraph and make corrections.
3.5.2.8 Pause reading (recording)
When we speak, we do not pronounce every single word, but pause at phrasal boundaries as if we are speaking in units. Pauses show the boundaries of the units, which represent formulaic sequences. Appropriate chunking not only indicates
learners’ understanding of a text, but contributes to their audience’s comprehensibility of a text and also to the language learners’ comprehensible input (Pawley, 1986, cited in Wray, 2002; Lewis, 1997; Wray, 2002; Schmitt, 2004). In contrast, chunking incorrectly will impede understanding.
To enhance learners’ awareness of the prefabricated chunks, we asked the participants to record the texts in their textbook every three lessons. Their reading guideline was to read in chunks and to (slightly) pause between chunks. The instructor listened to every recording and marked the wrong pauses or the missing pauses. Every student got her own feedback from the instructor. The better read recordings were played publicly in class as models. From the experience of reading in chunks, the participants gained familiarity with how a usual oral presentation was composed and delivered. Later, after processing spoken texts as listeners or speakers, we expect that they can exercise the same knowledge of chunking on their own.
3.5.2.9 The lexical notebook
Although there are conventions in using a language, personal preferences are still influential in making language choices. Language users choose words from their own database. By keeping a lexical notebook, the participants are reviewing what they have learned and simultaneously establishing their own language resources. The suggested format for a lexical notebook entry looks like this:
TEST (n.) [pronunciation + Chinese equivalent]
a set of written or spoken questions used for finding out how much someone knows about a subject. [meaning]
--do/take a test
e.g. If you get poor marks, you will have to take the test again.
--do well on a test
e.g. Mike did very well on yesterday’s test.
--pass/fail a test
e.g. Nick had a dejected look on his face after knowing he had failed his math test.
……
Following Lewis’ (2000) teaching suggestion, we proposed systematic
note-taking in the lexical notebook. The entire notebook included pronunciation, first language equivalent, English meaning, formulaic sequences, and examples. The learners were free to choose what they regarded as being useful. Generally speaking, the learners’ major resources were the dictionary entries that we had provided in class.
Even though there was abundant information in the dictionary, the students were reminded to edit the language before making an entry. Practicality was something to bear in mind. No item should go into the notebook unless students can retrieve it on demand.
It was impossible to involve all the nine techniques in a single lesson. Therefore, what we did was to follow a regular set of procedures. A formulaic sequences
instruction lesson sample is included in Appendix E as a concrete demonstration of what was really happening in our experimental teaching. The sample lesson plan presents the way we conducted the formulaic sequences instruction during the experiment period.
