The Effects of Decomposability on L2 Learners’ Comprehension and Translation of Formulaic Sequences in English

The Effects of Decomposability on L2 Learners’ Comprehension and Translation of Formulaic Sequences in English

The present study investigated how the factor of decomposability affected Korean L2 learners' comprehension of formulaic sequences in English through a translation task. Thirty Korean L2 learners of English participated in a translation task which was designed to probe the participants’ knowledge of twenty formulaic sequences in English differing in the degree of decomposability and frequency. The results showed that although the Korean L2 learners of English generally showed accurate understanding of the English formulaic sequences, their degree of understanding were significantly affected by whether the meaning of the formulaic sequence was decomposable or not. Formulaic sequences for which the overall meaning of the sequence could be gleaned from the meaning of its parts showed higher accuracy than those that were non-decomposable. These results suggest that decomposability is a factor that not only affects the processing of native speakers, but also that of L2 learners. The effects of different types of tasks in L2 studies are also discussed.