Abstract
The present study investigates the effect of the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences in pre-writing vocabulary activities on foreign language writing. To this end, a total of 81 Saudi pre-intermediate learners of English as a foreign language participated in a 10-week study of a pretest/posttest design. In every 2-hour session of a total of 10 sessions, the participants were required to read a news story and then re-write it individually without looking back at the original story. During the treatment period, the participants received different pre-writing vocabulary practice. One group, consisting of 44 students, practiced individual words in the news stories while the remaining 37 students studied formulaic sequences in the new stories before re-writing the stories in their own language. Analyzing the students’ writing showed that the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences led to an increased use of the sequences in students’ writing. The results also partially supported a positive influence for the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences on the learners’ lexical choices and overall writing quality. The practice provided on formulaic sequences in the study did not, however, result in any significant improvement in the learners’ use of formulaic sequences in autonomous story re-writing. Relevant pedagogical implications are proposed.
Highlights
Vocabulary knowledge is a prerequisite for writing (e.g., Li and Schmitt, 2009; Yonek, 2008)
The present study addresses four research questions with reference to the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences in EFL writing classes: 1. Does the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences in pre-writing tasks lead to increased use of formulaic sequences in students’ writing?
The first research question “Does the explicit instruction of formulaic sequences in pre-writing tasks lead to increased use of formulaic sequences in students’ writing?” was addressed through comparing the number of formulaic sequences the students recalled from the news stories they had read and produced in their writing tasks
Summary
Vocabulary knowledge is a prerequisite for writing (e.g., Li and Schmitt, 2009; Yonek, 2008). Lack of good vocabulary knowledge constitutes a major barrier to communication, in academic writing (e.g., Santos, 1988). Sinclair (1991) makes a distinction between two approaches to vocabulary generation that language users employ in their production. One approach allows users to select single words independently to fit clauses. Each position in the clause represents a choice for the user who needs to fill with a word to their liking. The approach was termed “the open choice principle.”. As Sinclair (1991) puts it, “the principle of idiom is that a language user has available to him a large number of semipreconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they might appear to be analysable into segments,” (110)
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