Abstract
Adult second language (L2) learners have often been found to produce discourse that manifests limited and non-native-like use of multiword expressions. One explanation for this is that adult L2 learners are relatively unsuccessful (in the absence of pedagogic intervention) at transferring multiword expressions from input texts to their own output resources. The present article reports an exploratory study where ESL learners were asked to re-tell a short story which they had read and listened to twice. The learners’ re-tells were subsequently examined for the extent to which they recycled multiword expressions from the original story. To gauge the influence of the input text on these learners’ renderings of the story, a control group was asked to tell the story based exclusively on a series of pictures. The results of the experiment suggest that multiword expressions were recycled from the input text to some extent, but this stayed very marginal in real terms, especially in comparison with the recycling of single words. Moreover, when learners did borrow expressions from the input text, their reproductions were often non-target-like.
Highlights
Multiword expressions have attracted a considerable amount of interest in applied linguistics circles in recent years, as evidenced, for example, by the steady stream of monographs and edited volumes devoted to the topic (e.g., Boers & Lindstromberg, 2009; Barfield & Gyllstad, 2009; Lewis, 1997, 2000; Meunier & Granger, 2008; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Polio, 2012; Schmitt, 2004; Wood, 2010a, 2010b, 2015; Wray, 2002)
Much adopted term, was formulaic sequence, which she defined as “a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar” (p. 9). While this is a comprehensive definition of the kinds of patterns we wish to consider in the present article, the definitional criterion of “holistic” retrieval makes it more suitable when one is dealing with native speakers than for studies such as ours, where L2 learners’ use of multiword lexis is examined
Of the word families that make up the narratives of the experimental group, on average 68.77% were shared with the input text
Summary
Multiword expressions have attracted a considerable amount of interest in applied linguistics circles in recent years, as evidenced, for example, by the steady stream of monographs and edited volumes devoted to the topic (e.g., Boers & Lindstromberg, 2009; Barfield & Gyllstad, 2009; Lewis, 1997, 2000; Meunier & Granger, 2008; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Polio, 2012; Schmitt, 2004; Wood, 2010a, 2010b, 2015; Wray, 2002). L2 learners’ command of target expressions may not yet be sufficiently proceduralized to warrant the kind of hesitant-free production that suggests the expressions are retrieved from the mental lexicon holistically, as prefabricated units To avoid this implication, we have opted to use the term multiword expression ( MWE) rather than formulaic sequence in the present article. In a partial replication of Jones and Haywood (2004), Peters and Pauwels (2015) examined the effect of integrating various MWE-focused activities in an EAP course They found evidence of an effect, but this evidence emerged more clearly in a discrete-item recognition test than in the learners’ spontaneous use of the MWEs in their writing assignments. In the exploratory study we report below, we gauge the extent to which adult ESL learners spontaneously recycle MWEs from a short story they are asked to retell
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