Use of Formulaic Sequences in Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students’ Expository Writings

Formulaic sequences (FSs) have a significant role in second language learners’ fluency. Thus, this study compared the distributions of FS types and FS codes in undergraduate and postgraduate students’ writings. A hundred expository compositions written by ۵۰ undergraduate and ۵۰ postgraduate students majoring in teaching English as a foreign language were coded for the FS types and FS codes and the coded data were analyzed. Regarding the FS types used by undergraduate students, the results indicated that the highest frequency belonged to collocations and the lowest to idioms. With regard to FS codes, the results showed that undergraduates’ use of grammatical collocations was significantly higher than that of lexical collocations while there was no significant difference in their use of the three lexical bundle codes nor in their use of compound codes. Concerning the distribution of FS types in postgraduate students’ writings, the most commonly used FSs were collocations while idioms were not used at all. As with FS codes, no significant difference was found in the postgraduates’ use of collocation codes and lexical bundle codes. However, they used open forms significantly less than closed and hyphenated forms. Regarding the comparison of undergraduate and postgraduate students, it was revealed that within the FS types, both groups used collocations with similar frequencies, but they differed in their use of other FS types. Idioms were more used by undergraduates whereas lexical bundles and compounds were more employed by postgraduate than undergraduate students. The study presents implications for language teachers and learners.

کلیدواژه ها:

Formulaic sequences ، Collocations ، Compounds ، Expository writing ، Idioms ، lexical bundles ، Postgraduate students ، Undergraduate Students