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Field: Second Language Acquisition

Research Topic:Formulaic Speech in Second
Language
Acquisition: The importance of
language
chunks in L2 learning.

The research was a two-month longitudinal study conducted on 21 young

adult students (10 males and 11 females) learning French in the
Department of foreign languages at Georgia State University. The students
were actually false beginners because most of them had already had French
in high school.
The purpose of this research was to determine whether or not the learning
of language chunks can favor creativity and enhance communication,
especially for beginners.

Introduction
Unlike many other second language acquisition research topics, formulaic
speech or formulaic language has attracted the attention of only a few researchers, and
it has been a concern of less importance in the acquisition and learning of a second
language. For many researchers, there is not any relationship between the learning of
chunks (or prefabricated patterns) and language creativity. Among others, Krashen
and Scarcella (1978), two prominent researchers in the field of SLA, have simply
argued that the learning of language chunks and language creativity are completely
independent. The learning of chunk is then relegated to rote learning as described and
used in methods like Audiolingual, where learning is so mechanical that it does not
allow the students to meaningfully generate new ideas, new thoughts, and even new
patterns. On the other hand, Wong-Fillmore (1976) argued that the acquisition of
formulaic speech plays a central role in second language learning. She claimed that
the learned language chunks become part of the learners' developing linguistic
system.
Today, more and more researchers (Hickey, 1993; Mitchell and Martin, 1997; Myles,
Hooper, and Mitchell, 1998; Towel and Hawkins, 1994; Weinert, 1995) are studying
this type of learning under a variety of labels: prefabricated routines and patterns,
imitated utterances, formulas, and formulaic units (Myles, Mitchell, &Hooper, 1999;
Raupach, 1984; Weinert, 1995; Wong-Fillmore, 1976). Formulaic speech can be
defined as a “multi-morphemic unit memorized and recalled as a whole, rather than
generated from individual items based on linguistic rules” (Myles et al, 1998, p. 325).
These sorts of utterances are often produced during human interactions, playing an
important role in communication. They bear contextual and cultural meaning as well
as linguistic meaning. From those researchers' studies comes the idea that the role of
formulaic language may have been underestimated. Among others, Towel and
Hawkins (1994) have suggested that this learning strategy be reconsidered and
possibly better understood.
The main purpose of this paper is to present some findings on whether or not
the learning of language chunks can favor creativity and enhance communication. It is
important to keep in mind, as argued by Pine and Lieven (1993, p.551, cited in Myles
et al, 1999, p. 52) that for some children, entry into structured language involves their
“gaining productive control over ‘slots’ in previously unanalyzed phrases.” Children
learn and internalize the language chunks that they hear around them (from parents,
friends, etc.) and use these chunks to utter things that they had never heard before. A
longitudinal study by Mitchell and Martin (1997) reveals that children from age 11 to
16 make great use of the language chunks in learning French. They found that some
pupils used those chunks in structured situation while a number of them were quite
able to adapt what they learned by replacing things and by putting bits together to
express their own ideas in French. My purpose here then is to contribute to the study
on the role of formulas by analyzing them in young adults’ L2 learning process and
see their effects on learning as well as language teaching.
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Formulaic speech, creativity, and communication

Many researchers have recognized the importance of formulaic language at early
stages but they have disputed its role in the learning process itself (Ellis, 1984, cited
in Mitchell & Martin, 1997). On the other hand, Wong-Fillmore (1976, cited in
Schmidt, 1983) reported that routines and patterns evolved into creative language in
the case of the children she studied. We know that children’s learning differs from
adults’ learning in that the former is mostly unconscious and the second is mostly
conscious (Bley-Vroman, 1989). Therefore, I was concerned with investigating how
conscious language learners, who have the ability to analyze the language in terms of
its structure and meaning, use the language chunks they are provided with. According
to Gibson and Cornwell (1979), awareness plays an important role in language
creativity. How then the memorization of language chunks can help young adults
acquire a second language is my main concern in this paper.
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Subjects Description
The project was a two-month longitudinal study conducted on a college-level class
that I taught on French as a foreign language in southern United States. The class met
three times a week for a session of 50 minutes with substantial additional work in the
laboratory. The 21 students (10 males and 14 females) involved in the study were
false beginners in that most of them had taken a French course either in high school or
in undergraduate college. Yet, the truth is that they remembered very little of what
they had learned. They were from a variety of cultures but mostly from U.S. cultures;
their age ranged from 18 to 32.

Procedure
My task consisted of providing students with language chunks in French with
their translation in English, on Mondays, taking 5-10 minutes of the class period.
They would then have to prepare, during the week, a conversation or a dialogue that
they would perform on Fridays, using those chunks. I decided not to chose the pairs of
students who would perform in advance so that all of them would have to prepare, as
no one knew in advance who was going to perform and who was not. Not only did I
provide the chunks, but also I often provided the dialogue situations. My purpose in
so doing was to give students some kind of orientation in order to prevent any
confusion on what they should do with the chunks. It is worth mentioning that the
utterances were not taken randomly or meaninglessly; students actually made a list of
formulaic speech in English that they thought they could use in everyday
communication in French, among themselves. From that list, I selected 7 utterances
that I deemed useful to them. I would write them on the board and had students write
them in a special notebook that they used for that particular purpose. After they had
written down the utterances, I would help them with the pronunciation of some of the
words and the different intonations. Before we left the class on Mondays, we took
care of forming pairs of students (10 in total including a group of 3 students), who had
to prepare the dialogues or conversations.
Just as on Mondays, I reserved ten minutes of the Friday class for the performance of
the conversations or dialogues that I asked the students to prepare. All pairs were
required to prepare those dialogues or conversations, but because of the time
constraint, only 3 or 4 were chosen randomly on Fridays to perform their dialogues.
The performers would stand in front of the whole class and perform the dialogue. The
other pairs would simply watch and have their turn the following Friday. All the
dialogues were tape-recorded to keep record of how previously learned chunks were
used by the students. No correction was made during the dialogues, nor was any
special feedback given from me except some encouragement and the cheers of the
class. Students were promised a reward at the end of the study: one of their lowest
quiz grades would be cancelled.
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Identifying Chunks
The study was conducted in two rounds with two different sets of chunks. Each
round lasted 3 weeks with 3 or 4 pairs performing each week. The first set of chunks,
which was used in the first round of conversation, was already designed as a dialogue
with 7 utterances for each of the two speakers involved. In fact, with the 7 utterances
that I selected from the students’ list, I made a dialogue myself in which each student
would have to use 7 chunks. One would ask the questions while the other would
answer. Students were supposed to pretend to have already met but without having
introduced themselves to each other. At times, the student who answered the
questions also asked some questions such as “Et toi, comment t’ appelles-tu?” (And
you, what’s your name?). When an utterance was completely new, I would not really
pay attention to it particularly, except for the context that it might create. I was mainly
concerned in looking at how the students would use the utterances that I gave them
myself. Below are the chunks for the first round.

Set of utterances for Round 1:

Q1: Bonjour, comment t’appelles-tu? (Good morning, what’s your name?)
R1: Je m’appelle … (Students say their name). (My name is …)
Q2: Quel âge as-tu? (How old are you?)
R2: J’ai (20) ans. (I’m (20) year old.)
Q3: D’où viens-tu? (Where do you come from?)
R3: Je viens de (France). (Each says the country he/she is from) (I come from
(France)).
Q4: Où habites-tu? (Where do you live?)
R4: J’habite à (Marietta). (I live in (Marietta).)
Q5: Avec qui habites-tu? (With whom do you live?)
R5: J’habite avec ma famille. (I live with my family.)
Q6: Quels cours prends-tu? (What classes are you taking?)
R6: Je prends un cours de Français. (I’m taking a French class.)
Q7: Comment vas-tu à l’université? (How do you go to the university?)
R7: Je vais en voiture. (I go by car).

The above utterances are some of the ones that students usually use in their daily
conversations. This constitutes the rationale for my focusing on informal language,
which seemed more authentic and in which students could be better involved.
The second set of chunks, used in the second round was randomly given to the
students, who had to build a conversation or a dialogue around them. The reason for
that change was to see the level of involvement of students at a higher degree. I was
interested in seeing the degree of creativity in both provided contexts and contexts
that students would create themselves, still using the provided chunks as shown
below.

Set of utterances for round 2:

1- J’ai faim (I’m hungry).
2- Je veux aller au restaurant. (I want to go to the restaurant).
3- Veux-tu venir avec moi? (Do you want to come with me?)
4- J’ai envie de prendre du thé chaud. (I would like to drink some hot tea).
5- J’ai soif. (I’m thirsty).
6- J’ai envie de boire de l’eau glacée. (I would like to drink some ice water).

The conversations that were done by the students in this second part had many new
utterances. This was somehow predictable because some of the utterances actually
required some questions while others required some answers.
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Results
 The findings of this study were interesting and, actually, not far from my
expectations. Some of the dialogues sounded just like some kind of recitation. A
number of students stuck to the chunks without adding or changing anything. There
were some hesitations as students tried to remember the words. Fillers like “umh”
were frequently used. In spite of this, some very interesting findings were made. For
example, in response 1 (R1), most of the respondents added two new words (et toi?)
(and you?) and raised their intonation at the end. This was a way of returning question
1 (Q1), Comment t’appelles-tu?, to the sender, without having to re-state the whole
sentence again. In one of the conversations during the first round, the respondent
replaced a word by a new one, without changing the meaning of the utterance. She
said, in answering Q1, Je suis Amanda (I’m Amanda). That showed her understanding
that we can express the same idea differently. In response 4 (R4), I noticed more word
addition and chunk combinations. A student put an emphasis on himself while
answering Q4: Moi (me), j’habite à College Park. This “Moi” was inserted in the right
position, keeping then the syntactical rule correct. Another student, while answering
the same question provided an additional information about the place she lives at:
J’habite à l’appartement à Marietta (I live in an apartment in Marietta). Although the
inserted phrase was grammatically incorrect, the student demonstrated how she could
modify the chunk by inserting new words and convey additional messages. The same
information was also provided by another student who succeeded in making a
syntactically correct sentence. The new phrase was added at the end of the given
chunk: J’habite Dunwoody umh… dans un appartment (I live in Dunwoody umh… in
an apartment). The utterance shows that there was some hesitation before the new
phrase was added. The most logical reason for this is that the respondent was trying to
recall the phrase and put it in the right order in order to convey her message
successfully. Two other students combined both the chunk in R4 and the chunk in R5
while they were answering Q4. They successfully made the necessary deletions so
that the sentence would be syntactically correct and keeping also its function. These
two utterances are written below:

A1: J’habite à Rosewell avec ma famille, loin de l’université. (I live in Rosewell with
my family, far from the university.)
A2: J’habite à Decatur avec ma mère, et toi? (I live in Decatur with my mother. And
you?)

In answer 1 (A1), the respondent provided extra information by adding one more
phrase (loin de l’université). This is the kind of complex sentence that are used in
highly advanced French classes. Answering the same question, a student, who had
previously listened to the two students mentioned above, obviously tried to imitate
their utterances but remembered that these utterances would not be true statements
about himself. The reader will notice that there was some hesitation before he
provided the information that was true about himself:

A3: J’habite à Stone Mountain avec umh… moi seul. (I live in Stone Mountain with
umh… alone).

The combination of these two last words (moi seul) is not accepted in standard
French, but here it does serve its purpose. Functionally, it is acceptable in that it is
often commonly used by French speakers. Three students, who waited for the
question before answering, skipped the phrase avec ma famille (with my family) by
saying something true about themselves. One said that she was living avec mon
copain Frederic (with my boyfriend Frederic); another one said that she was living
avec ma mère (with my mother). The third one used a phrase -avec mes parents (with
my parents)- that worked as a synonym to the replaced phrase in R5 (avec ma
famille). For response 6 (R6), one student replaced the phrase Je prends (I take) by
J’étudie (I study). Interestingly enough, she deleted two words (cours de), which
worked only with the phrase that she replaced. So, instead of saying J’étudie le cours
de Français, (I’m studying the French class) which would make no sense, she said
J’étudie le Francais (I’m studying French). Moreover, almost all the participants
provided additional information about the other classes that they were taking while
answering Q6. One of them added even a description of the French class -et mon
cours préféré le Français (and French, my favorite class). The conjunction et was
successfully used by a couple of students to connect the phrases in the provided
chunks to the new phrases that they were adding. Noteworthy is the fact that while
using that conjunction, they understood that they did not need to re-state the subject
and the verb again. A similar case consisted of a complete deletion with no
replacement. In answering Q7, one student simply deleted the subject and the verb but
kept the complement en voiture (by car). She thereby demonstrated her ability to
delete words that would sound repetitious and that are not necessary for the
expression of an idea. The subject and the verb were simply implied in this answer.
The second round showed almost the same results. In the first dialogue, the
speakers created a context in order to use chunk 2, Je veux aller au restaurant. Before
one of the students used the above chunk, the other student asked her what she was
going to do that night. The use of the future in the question pushed the respondent to
modify the chunk by saying Je vais aller au restaurant (I will go to the restaurant)
instead of Je veux aller au restaurant (I want to go to the restaurant) just as in the
original chunk. In another dialogue, one student combined a chunk from the first
round with three of the second round. Answering the following question Comment
allez-vous?, she answered Ça va, mais j'ai très faim. On va au restaurant? (I'm fine,
but I'm very hungry. How about going to the restaurant?) Not only did she succeed in
combining all these four chunks, but also she strengthened the meaning of one of
them by using an intensifier (très): J'ai très faim (I'm very hungry). In addition to that,
she combined chunk 2 and 3 and modified them by replacing the subjects and turning
the two phrases into a single question, On va au restaurant? (how about going to the
restaurant?). Finally, she made a great use of the connector mais (but), showing the
contrast between her feeling good and her being hungry. Another student succeeded
in making almost the same combination, but with two chunks. She asked her friend if
she wanted to come to the restaurant without saying first that she wanted to go herself,
and also deleting avec moi (with me). This is what she said: Veux-tu venir au
restaurant? (Do you want to come to the restaurant?). The word venir (to come) here
implied that the one who invited was already going to the restaurant. Based on that
context then, she did not need to add avec moi, which would have been redundant.
Besides these interesting findings, I also noticed that some of the chunks were either
not used or used in the exact form in which they were provided. This was the case
with Comment t'appelles-tu, quel âge as-tu, où habites-tu, d'où viens-tu, which had all
been used without any change. Actually, these chunks hardly accept any modification,
even in native French speakers’ interactions. J'ai envie de boire de l'eau glacée was
used only once and with a lot of hesitation. The following is an attemptive
reproduction of how it was used: J'ai ... envie de ... boire ... de ... l'eau glacée. It
should be noted that this utterance was one of the longest chunks provided. The
longest one -J'ai envie de prendre du thé chaud- was not used at all. There are all
reasons to assume that the shorter a chunk, the most often it is likely to be used and
modified by learners, especially beginners.
Now, what do all these results tell us in terms of communication and creativity?
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Discussion
The purpose of this research study was to see the impact of language chunks on
L2 learning. The question I was trying to address was whether formulaic speech can
be used creatively and serve the purpose of communication and learning. Based on the
above results, the first observation I can make is that language chunks have a very
important role in L2 learning. It seems obvious that language chunks play an
important role in communication. As Charles Fillmore (1976, cited in Vihman, 1982)
has pointed out, there is a great deal of formulaic expressions in natural language.
This shows how vital those expressions are for L2 learners in order to be able to meet
basic communicative needs. In the study, students demonstrated that they could
converse with the chunks that I provided them even when they were given randomly.
I could see that students turned those chunks into their own, creating at times some
contexts in which they could fit. This study certainly supports the idea that chunks
have a useful communicative function, refuting at the same time the belief that it is
only during the early stages that they are useful (Weinert, 1995, cited in Mitchell and
Martin, 1997). Some of the chunks that did not deal with the actual lives of students
were simply ignored. The hesitations that occurred sometimes were not just a matter
of recitation; instead, students tried to simulate the actual communicative settings in
which people do not always say things in one trait. Hesitations were also the proof of
students’ reflection in order to put their ideas or words together and create the
sentences. This, of course triggers the process of L2 learning in that the students
successfully incorporate the chunks in contextual conversations instead of just reciting
them mechanically. They alternate the positions of the chunks according to the
context that they create by themselves.
The results also show that language chunks are not always used exactly the
way they are provided. This departs from the idea that formulaic speech only serves
for rote learning. On the contrary, there is evidence that students did not repeat the
chunks mechanically but tried instead to make them meaningful by not only providing
contexts in which they could fit, but also, and especially, by either recombining or
modifying them. It is important to mention that the degree of recombination and
modification varied according to the levels of students. Most of the students who
made the most complex recombinations and modifications were the most successful
in class. Two of them had recently taken a French class, contrary to the others, who
had not studied French for many years. In addition, some students seemed more
enthusiastic about the study; therefore, they had a better preparation and performed
better, using more complex utterances. They succeeded in adapting the chunks by
either adding new ones or replacing some while adjusting them to their real lives. The
students who recombined the least were less proficient. They were the ones who
mostly used the chunks without any change. A couple of them also did not seem very
enthusiastic about the study. Their performances were often very fast and cold,
contrary to the most enthusiastic students who had a very warm performance, which,
consequently, aroused more cheers from the class.
 Overall, as can be seen in the results, chunks were often put together in the
same response to anticipate questions that were likely to be asked. Being creative in
language does not necessarily mean that you create a completely new utterance, both
in its form and its meaning. As Stemmer (1973) clearly mentioned in his research
about children creativity, creativity also occurs when previously heard chunks are
associated to generate a new idea or a new thought. Knowing the meaning of each of
those chunks, students understood that they could either delete one word or phrase, or
replace them by other words or phrase in order to communicate their ideas. By
providing some contexts, students transfer their creative thought into their speech,
influencing then the chunks they were supposed to use. Thus, the chunks, as Mitchell
and Martin (1997) remarked, break down with new elements being substituted within
them. The findings of this research support the idea that students usually unpack the
chunks and use parts of them, sometimes by combining them with other parts, and use
them to produce new utterances. It seems obvious, based on the study, that not all
learners will have the same degree of creativity in recombining and modifying
chunks, but at least it shows that creativity is well engaged in the unpacking of
chunks. Students did not just give back the chunks as they had received them but tried
instead, to use them meaningfully in a context.
As a whole, the results from this study suggest that formulaic speech does play an
important role in language learning. Contrary to what Krashen and Scarcella (1978)
have contended, the findings have indicated that creativity is not independent from the
breaking down of chunks. Students do modify the chunks they are provided with so
that they can fit in contexts; they do generate new ideas and new thoughts through a
process of deletion, addition or replacement instead of just reciting the chunks. I will
not deny the fact that some chunks will be reproduced in their original forms.
However, this does not make their use less creative or less communicative in that
students build some personal contexts around them, turning them into meaningful
utterances instead of just detached and meaningless utterances.
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