What's new?: A usage-based classroom study of linguistic routines and creativity in L2 learning

Abstract

Investigating the linguistic repertoire of a classroom learner of English, this paper builds on an explorative methodology of tracing L2 development. The paper draws on longitudinal interactional classroom data, and the methodology is inspired by the traceback procedure from child language research (e.g., Lieven et al. 2009; Vogt and Lieven 2010). These studies showed, by way of tracing children's actual utterances backwards in development, that the children's emerging repertoires consisted of formulas and utterance schemas, and that only a few basic syntactic operations accounted for early syntactic creativity. Applying this traceback procedure to my L2 data reveals that L2 learning is also rooted in recycled formulas and utterance schemas, and that the syntactic operations identified by Lieven and colleagues, especially substitution of semantically similar items in open slots, also apply to adult L2 learning. Recycled formulas and novel utterances based on utterance schemas and brought about by substitution account for more than 85% of my focal student's production – a result which mirrors the findings for L1 in the work of Lieven and colleagues.