Previous studies have suggested that frequency is a factor that affects the degree to which formulaic sequences are stored and processed as chunks(Sosa & MacFarlane, 2002, Kapatinski & Radicke, 2009). However, it remains an open question whether these corpus-derived frequencies are applicable to studies examining L2 learners of English, as most of the corpora used in these studies are based on language usage in America. The present study investigates the validity of corpus-based studies on formulaic sequences with L2 learners. 28 Korean L2 learners of English were tested on their familiarity and usage of 32 formulaic sequences differing in collocational frequencies, based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results showed that the familiarity ratings of the L2 learners accurately reflected the frequencies of the formulaic sequences (r=.07, p＜.0005). The test scores on the usage of the formulaic sequences were slightly less accurate in reflecting the corpus frequencies, with the correlation between the two factors nearing significance (r=.33, p=.08). The results of this study suggest that corpus-derived frequencies e.g., COCA, are valid for L2 studies also, but the L2 learner participants' knowledge of the formulaic sequences under examination should always be tested beforehand.
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Method
4. Results
5. Discussions
6. Conclusions
References
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