Formulaic language is not only part of the language, but also part of the culture of the speakers of that language. Therefore, it poses some special problems for a second language learner.
In addition to acquiring linguistic competence, L2 learners need to acquire figurative competence, which encompasses idioms, compound words, collocations, phrasal verbs, and other multi-word expressions (Cieślicka, 2015). The two most relevant questions in teaching L2 idiomatic expression are 1) ‘how can multiword strings be most effectively taught to learners,’ and 2) ‘which multiword strings should be prioritized in teaching?’ (Wray, 2013: 317).
Different kinds of formulaic language require different kinds of teaching techniques. In fact, learnability of the formulaic language is said to be regulated by their semantic transparency and frequency of use (Nippold, 2006). In addition, context, analogy, precedence, and pragmatics are said to be influencing the interpretation of an unfamiliar idiomatic expression (Wray, Bell, and Jones, 2016).
This paper examines L2 processing, comprehension, acquisition, and teaching of the formulaic language in Persian. The paper starts by presenting the reasons why studying the formulaic language is significant. After all, as stated by Wray (2013), in order to study L2 formulaic language processing, one needs to know why this kind of language is so common in the language as well as the linguistic structure of the idiomatic expressions. After that, I discuss different theories of L1 and L2 formulaic language processing for different kinds of the formulaic language. Then I argue how evidence from Persian contributes to the arguments made by these theories. Following that, I discuss the comprehension and acquisition of formulaic language by presenting a study on Persian language learners. Finally, I introduce different techniques to most effectively teach the formulaic language to Persian language learners, and I will open the discussion to the audience to add to those techniques.
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