Abdullah sarani - University of Sistan and Baluchestan
Rasool Najjarbaghseyah - Language Department, IRI Amin Police University, Tehran, Iran

Communicative language use largely entails regular patterns consisting of pre-constructed phrases or sequences. These sequences have been examined by many researchers to find the situation-based formulas which may help L۲ learners follow a possibly more target-like speaking system. This study, therefore, explored two categories of formulaic expressions including speech formulas and situation-bound utterances used by EFL learners. The randomly selective participants included ۳۰ intermediate and ۳۰ advanced learners, who performed a total number of ۱۲۰ role-play tasks focused on the situations which required the use of thanking, requesting, offering, and apology speech acts. Audio-recorded data from role-plays were transcribed and analyzed based on existing lists of speech formulas. Results showed that the participants produced more than ۱۰۲ types of formulaic sequences that could be called “a list of pragmatic routines for thanking, requesting, offering, and apologizing speech acts in the EFL context”.  This list includes ۴۴ and ۵۸ speech formulas and situation-bound utterances, respectively. Results further indicated that advanced language learners used more diverse situation-bound utterances in terms of its internal and contextual complexity than their counterparts in the intermediate group due to expert judgments. Because these formulas can increase coherence in speaking, and enhance effective and natural communication, their instruction could be part of the language teaching curriculum.

Formulaic Expressions, Language Formula, Pragmatic Routines, Teaching English as a Foreign Language