Formulaic Sequence In Literature

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1.2. Introduction Writing is seen as an important skill in high levels of education and numerous students attempt to be identified as the members of the group of competent writers in academic settings (Cortes, 2004; Hyland 2008a, 2008b). Academic writing such as any other type of writing can only be useful when writers apply conventions which other members of their field of study find convincing and familiar (Hyland, 2009). Wells (1992) argues that “each subject discipline constitutes a way of making sense of human experience that has evolved over generations and each is dependent on its own particular practices: its instrumental procedures, its criteria for judging relevance and validity, and its conventions of acceptable forms of argument”…show more content…
Altenberg (1998) claimed that 80% of language consists of formulaic sequences and other scholars like Erman and Warren (2000) suggested that nearly one-third to half of language use prefabricated word sequences. Ellis (1996) and Wray (2002) maintained that Second language acquisition (SLA) theory shows that early stages of learning a second language are heavily based on formulaic sequences. Such sequences are first saved as undivided units but then reprocessed and reanalyzed in order to make more flexible structures at later stages of learning. Formulaic sequences are greatly employed in academic writing and are known as an important factor of EAP writing development (Biber, Egbert, McClair& Staples, 2013). In academic writing formulaic sequences have aroused interests in researchers and instructors for the past four decades (Cortes, 2013).Firth (1964) introduced “collocability” and “collocation” in order to address frequent co-occurrences of words. Cortes (2002) said that the pioneering studies of word combinations were greatly based on impressionistic, intuitive, and less quantitative evidence-based…show more content…
The high frequency of word combinations and formulaic sequences has been recognized as a sign of effective language use of specific registers such as academic writing (Bamber, 1983; McCully, 1985). Haswell (1991) maintained that the adequate use of recurrent word combinations shows a definite maturity in writing skill, whereas the lack of such combinations refers to inexperienced writers. Cortes (2004) stated that " the frequent use of fixed expressions seems to signal competent language use within a register to the point that learning conventions of register use may in part consist in learning how to use certain fixed phrases" (p.398). If students who are non-native speakers of English want to use the linguistic conventions of academic genres, they need to get aware of how written language is structured (Schleppegrell,
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