著者

磯辺 ゆかり

出版者

一般社団法人大学英語教育学会

雑誌

JACET関西紀要 (ISSN:18802281)

巻号頁・発行日

no.13, pp.38-49, 2011-03-31

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The main purpose of this study is to explore how formulaic sequences (FSs) are mentally represented and processed by Japanese EFL learners. Two experiments were conducted based on the holistic hypothesis that FSs are stored and retrieved as single lexicalized units. Experiment 1 investigated the hypothesized processing advantage of FSs by comparing reaction times and error rates for three types of sequences: formulaic, nonformulaic, and ungrammatical sequences in a word order appropriateness judgment task. Experiment 2 examined the effects of familiarity with whole sequences on their processing in a sequence familiarity judgment task. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that FSs were processed significantly faster with much fewer errors than the other sequences, thereby indicating that EFL learners benefit from the processing advantage of FSs. In Experiment 2, both the familiarity and frequency of formulaic expressions were identified as the essential factors that facilitate the recognition of FSs. It is noteworthy that the participants with lower proficiency also enjoy the same processing advantage of FSs as those with higher proficiency; this suggests that FSs learning may be introduced from the early stage of second language development.