EFL Learners Use of Formulaic Language in Oral Assessments: A Study on Fluency and Proficiency

Abstract

Despite the recent, increasing interest in the research of formulaic language which constitutes a significant part of languages, there is little research on formulaic language use in registers such as classroom teaching and textbooks. Therefore, this article aims to investigate a) formulaic language use of EFL learners in multi-task oral proficiency exams consisting of an individual and a paired task, b) the task type in which these learners use more formulaic language, and c) whether the use of formulaic expressions is related to their fluency and overall proficiency scores. The data were gathered from the content analyses of video recordings of oral proficiency exam belonging to 190 EFL learners with different proficiency levels according to the description of CEFR and the course book used at School of Foreign Languages at a state university in Turkey. The findings indicate that EFL learners used formulaic language which they were exposed to through their course books in oral proficiency exams with different tasks; they used more formulaic language in the paired tasks in which they interact with another exam taker and their use was significantly related to their scores of fluency and language proficiency.