Formulaic language and collocations in German essays: from corpus-driven data to corpus-based materials

Abstract

Whereas there exists a plethora of research on collocations and formulaic language in English, this article contributes towards a somewhat less developed area: the understanding and teaching of formulaic language in German as a foreign language. It analyses formulaic sequences and collocations in German writing (corpus-driven) and provides modern language instructors with a hands-on application of phrases to be used in writing (corpus-based). We report on a corpus-driven analysis of over 300 essays written by native speakers of German (Falko-L1) and British undergraduate students of German (WHiG), which revealed that advanced learners rely more on formulaic language than native speakers, that advanced learners prefer macro-structuring devices over micro-structuring devices used by native speakers, and that the learners in WHiG prefer impersonal and indirect stance expressions over direct ones used by native speakers in Falko-L1. Using corpus-based methods, we then present a didactic methodology for modern language instructors on how to approach five keywords that are particularly characteristic of formulaic language use in German academic writing: Zweck ‘aim’, Beispiel ‘example’, Ansicht ‘opinion’, laut ‘according to’, Fazit ‘conclusion’.