The influence of formulaic language on L2 listener decoding in extended discourse

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of formulaic language on L2 learners’ ability to decode words in listening texts. One possibility was that formulas would facilitate listening by reducing the need to process every word of the sequences. However, a contrasting possibility was that the commonly reduced nature of formulaic words would hinder performance. Words from targeted sections of two texts of different levels of difficulty were identified as formulaic or non-formulaic. To gather the data, participants transcribed these targeted sections in the texts through a technique known as paused transcription. Analysis of these transcriptions suggested the presence of formulas did not advantage the listeners in identifying words in general. However, it did advantage them in identifying function words, but only on the more challenging text. It was concluded that in this cognitively demanding environment of the challenging text, where listeners’ attention likely shifted to the content words to extract meaning, their holistic processing of the formulas facilitated their decoding of the function words by helping them to bypass analyzing many of these words individually. Besides these outcomes, the study was innovative both in the questions it sought to address and the methods used to address these.