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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 443
International Conference on Science and Education and Technology (ISET 2019)
Formulaic Language Performance of Teachers
and Students in Blended Speaking Classroom
Using Edmodo
Januarius Mujiyanto Mursid Saleh
Radeni Sukma Indra Dewi Universitas Negeri Semarang Universitas Negeri Semarang
Universitas Negeri Semarang
radenisukmaindradewi@gmail.com Dwi Rukmini
Universitas Negeri Semarang
Abstract---The distinction between teachers and competence. Formulaic speech needs to be
students in their use of the identified formulaic introduced to students as a preparation before they
sequences may not be a matter of competence as some hand the real communication. In some universities,
researchers assumed. The finding revealed that the demand for learning English rises from time to
formulaic sequences promote efficiency in tasks in time because English used as a medium of
general as the time needed to finish the tasks decreases instruction in blended learning classroom. Even
when more identified sequences were used. The though the status of English is a foreign language in
discourse function of formulaic sequences, however, Indonesia was so lack genuine situation to speak the
differed in the sense that they helped subjects construct language.
longer discourse in the picture task but shorter
discourse in the problem-solving task. Teachers in this In everyday speaking, English native speakers
study used more identified formulaic sequences than tend to use lexical bundles, collocations, idioms, etc,
students but this difference was only significant in the which I refer here to formulaic expressions. So,
picture task but not in the problem-solving task. students should be exposed to formulaic expressions
However, among the teachers and students, three styles to be in native-like fashion. In fact, many University
of formulaic sequences use could be identified. The students have great difficulties to produce formulaic
first pattern was that subjects used more formulaic expressions thus their utterances sound unnatural
sequences in the picture task than in the problem- and foreign to English natives. Kecskes [2] argues
solving task. The second pattern was vice versa; and the reason why non-native speakers find difficulties
the third pattern was subjects have similar use of
identified formulaic sequences in both tasks. As these to produce natural expressions because non-native
three groups balanced each other, t-test between all speakers have different language experiences from
subjects’ use of formulaic sequences in the two tasks English native speakers. Language experience
was not statistically significant.
cannot be separated from speakers’ everyday reality
Keywords: formulaic language, formulaic performance, and the reality of speaking in English culture tends
teachers performance, students performance, to contain lots of formulaic expressions to
blended speaking classroom using Edmodo communicate.
In other words, formulaic speech can help
I. INTRODUCTION students develop their formulaic competence and
strategic competence. The memorized expressions
One of the important components in can also help students develop their linguistic
Communicative Competence’s Theory by Celce competence because they can refer to the structure of
Murcia [1] is formulaic competence which enables the fixed expressions they use. In fact, they can also
students to create natural and fluent spoken and learn about the target culture through the
written texts. This competency refers to recurrent expressions, when and how the expressions are said
fixed chunks/expressions used by native speakers to appropriately within certain discourse. Up to this
communicate in daily life such as collocations, point, the writer argues that formulaic competence is
idioms, lexical frames, and routines. Other crucial for a second language speaker and writer.
competencies which are closely related to formulaic The formulaic speech can help students survive in
competence are linguistic and socio-cultural unpredictable language use.
competencies. In creating a text, students learn The information of the study background
grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation but they reveal the reasons why this study is essential
also have to be aware of social factors by which the to do. They are, first, most EFL student teachers
language is influenced so that the text will be in Indonesia stated that they experienced difficulties
socially accepted. due to unfamiliar vocabulary and a limited number
Students rarely used and applied formulaic of examples in formulaic expressions. Second,
expressions in classroom interaction, deal with the based on preliminary research at Universitas
poor formulaic speech of students, the teacher can Muhammadiyah Semarang in May 7th, 2018,
foster the students to be exposed more to activities, it is revealed that Second Language
lessons, and practices to improve their formulaic
Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 608
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 443
(L2) Learners of English tend to produce incorrect or Another study on formulaic expressions used in
deviant collocations in their L2 spoken outputs, students interaction and casual conversation were
because of their failure to recognize it as a formulaic conducted by [10], [11] Khusnita, Dafi & Rukmini,
expression to be learned. 2016; Neno & Agustien, 2016) revealed that that
A study on competence and performance of formulaic expressions are very important for EFL
communicative competence in learning and teaching students to be sound natural and fluent in speaking.
English were carried out by [3]–[5] Epstein, Flynn, & The result showed that the students used collocations,
Martohardjono, 1996; Newby, 2011; Tuan, 2017) lexical bundles, inserts, idioms, and binomial
pointed that low discourse competence among expressions. The most frequent types were
learners is influenced by their low English language collocations and lexical bundles since the students
exposure and less focus of this dimension in the were more familiar with literal meanings instead of
teaching of English. Structurally, the low discourse idiomatic meanings. However, there were many
competence is accounted to the fact that English unnatural expressions in their interactions therefore
language is treated as a foreign language and not as a formulaic expressions have to get more attention in
second language. Such policy in the country impedes teaching instruction. Furthermore, it is found that
the development of language proficiency of the learners‟ problem in realizing formulaic sequences
learners in the English language. Specifically, the includes the tendency to simply use the expressions
field of specialization spells out differences in they heard from any sources without considering the
communicative competence of the learners in as appropriateness of the expressions, the difficulty in
much as the expected level of communicative using correct formulaic sequences to be used in the
competencies in different professions vary. Finally, given situation, the idiomaticity of formulaic
grammatical and discourse competence among sequences, the tendency to translate Indonesian
learners is influenced by their English language expressions into English literally word by word, and
exposure. The more exposed the learners in the problems related to grammar.
English language, the higher is their communicative A research on classroom interaction pattern was
competence. conducted by Rafieerad, 2010 [12] revealed that it is
Sinclair [6] conduct a research creates an necessary for the teachers to reorganize the activities
empirically derived, pedagogically useful list of which can foster more interaction in the classroom,
formulaic sequences for academic speech and such as brainstorming and problem-solving, role play,
writing, comparable with the Academic Word List simulations, and discussion. Using such activities in
(Coxhead 2000), called the Academic Formulas List the classroom, teachers will be able to motivate
(AFL). The AFL includes formulaic sequences students to learn in a more involving way. These
identified as (i) frequent recurrent patterns in corpora kinds of activities can provoke a very positive attitude
of written and spoken the language, which (ii) occur towards language learning since they resemble real-
significantly more often in academic than in non- life events. Moreover, students must be persuaded to
academic discourse, and (iii) inhabit a wide range of interact positively and effectively in the language
academic genres. It separately lists formulas that are classroom. Teachers should incorporate more real life
common in academic spoken and academic written like activities into their teaching practice such as
language, as well as those that are special to academic ‘problem-solving’, ‘information-gap tasks’ and the
written language alone and academic spoken like.
language alone. The AFL further prioritizes these The above-mentioned studies inspired me to
formulas using an empirically derived measure of conduct a study in the same area, formulaic
utility that is educationally and psychologically valid expressions, but with a different focus. I am willing
and operationalizable with corpus linguistic metrics. to investigate the real use of formulaic expressions by
The formulas are classified according to their Indonesian EFL teachers and students in blended
predominant pragmatic function for descriptive learning classroom interaction using Edmodo.
analysis and in order to marshal the AFL for inclusion Teachers here analogized with the term of “Native
in English for Academic Purposes instruction. Speaker”, in case of the competence of Teachers in
A study on formulaic expressions used in English Education Study Program which almost have
conversation text was carried out by Mustapa, Yaholil the same competence with Native Speaker. And
& Agustien, 2017; Sugiati & Rukmini, 2017 [7], [8] Students here analogized with the term of “Non
showed that there are four forms of formulaic Native Speaker”, in case of the competence of
expressions identified in the conversational texts. students which still needs to be improved more in the
There were only four out of five formulaic use of formulaic language. The participants of the
expressions types as formulated by Biber et al. (1999) study are the teachers and also students of the first and
[9]. They were lexical bundles, idiomatic phrases, second semester of English Department of
collocations, and inserts. Based on these findings, Universitas Muhammadiyah Semarang.
there are many conversational texts that do not sound The study purposes is to investigate on how
natural; consequently, there must be some revisions. teachers and students differ in their use of formulaic
sequences in other conditions such as task types.
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 443
Other aims of this study were to explore empirically was to identify formulaic sequences with the help of
the relationship between formulaic language and a corpus tool called Word Smith 4.0.
fluency and discourse functions of formulaic Finally, this study investigated the phonological
language. features of formulaic sequences and attempted to
validate the use of changes in rate of articulation as a
II. METHODS way of detecting formulaicity. This research was a
After a review of literature, it turns out that the corpus study, which defined as a piece of language
difference between teachers and students should be text collection in electronic form selected according
worth more investigation. This study set out to extend to external criteria, as far as possible to represent a
the investigation on how teachers and students differ language or language variety as a source of data for
in their use of formulaic sequences in other conditions linguistic Aini, Faridi, & Fitriati, 2018 [15]. In
such as task types. Other aims of this study were to answering the research questions, the researcher did
explore empirically the relationship between some steps, started with the tasks, the subjects, data
formulaic language and fluency and discourse collection, and data analysis.
functions of formulaic language. In the review of 2.1 The Tasks
literature, it is found that many researchers have In this study, two types of tasks, namely a picture
reported their observations or speculations about the task and a decision-making task, were investigated. In
function of formulaic language in enhancing fluency the picture task, there were two sets of pictures; each
and improving discourse organization but there is a containing 6 frames. The first set of pictures was
lack of empirical evidence. So in this study, aspects about two children going on a picnic and the second
of fluency and discourse organization were measured set of pictures was about getting back a football from
and tested to see if and how they are related to a big hole. The pictures were clearly drawn and the
formulaic language. idea was very straightforward such that the plot
The research design is a corpus-based studies or behind the pictures could be understood easily by
corpora analysis. This kind of study is suitable in both the subjects and their partners. The subjects’ task
order to determine the use of linguistic features in a was to work in pairs and tell the story in the pictures
text likewise meta discourse features. Baker, 2007 to their partner, who did not have the pictures with
[13] states unlike qualitative research design, corpora them. When the first speaker finished his/her story,
analysis implements more quantitative design for the listener raised questions about the story and then
instance by using frequency of linguistic features in the first speaker had to answer the questions. When
texts. Additionally, Biber, 2009 [14] point out that the listener had no more questions, the partner starts
corpus-based studies depend on both quantitative and telling the story in his/her own set of pictures.
qualitative research design. It states ‘associations The decision-making task contained three letters
to the Agony Aunt, each specifying a problem related
patterns’ refers to quantitative relations using to to love affairs. The three problems should be
measure the characterizations exist in different interesting to the subjects and they did not find the
pattern associated with contextual patterns.
Nevertheless, functional interpretation (qualitative problems too easy or too difficult. The subjects’ task
design) is also an important design in corpora was to work in pairs to negotiate with their partner
analysis. and agree on one solution to the problem. Before the
The subjects in this study were 10 teachers and interactions started, subjects were given 10-minute
10 students in blended speaking classroom using individual planning time to look at the pictures or the
Edmodo. The two groups of 10 participants were three letters and to plan what they wanted to say about
randomly assigned to form pairs with other members them. The subjects were allowed to write notes but
in their group and do the two tasks. Researcher use they were not allowed to look at the notes when they
two instruments in this study, two types of tasks used did the task. For all pairs of subjects, the picture task
as an instrument of the study, namely a picture task was done first, followed by the problem-solving task.
and a decision-making task, were investigated. In the 2.2 The Subjects
picture task, there were two sets of pictures; each The subjects in this study were 10 teachers and
containing 6 frames. The decision-making task 10 students in blended speaking classroom using
contained three letters to the Agony Aunt, each Edmodo. The subjects were not asked to do
specifying a problem related to love affairs. The first proficiency tests for this study but their English
procedure in this study was to investigate the proficiency should be around intermediate to upper
performances of subjects. The performances of the intermediate considering the language proficiency
subjects in the two tasks were recorded using a digital requirement for entrance into the university and the
audio recorder. The second procedure was fact that the participants of the English language
transcription process. The two hours of recordings courses were usually those who had difficulty using
were transcribed to form a 20,000-word corpus. The English in their academic studies. The two groups of
transcribed texts were then analyzed both 10 participants were randomly assigned to form pairs
quantitatively and qualitatively. The last procedure
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 443
with other members in their group and do the two III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
tasks. 3.1 Use of Formulaic Expressions by Teachers
2.3 Data Collection and Students
Each session of data collection was done in a Based on the identification criteria stated in
quiet and comfortable room by the researchers with previous section, 670 tokens in total of formulaic
each pair of subjects. When the researchers finished expressions were found in this study. In other words,
introducing themselves, the subjects were told what 4.81 formulaic sequences were used per minute by
they needed to do in the experiment and that their students and 7.01 sequences per minute by teachers
performances would be recorded. When the subjects (refer to table 5). The fact that the teachers used
were ready to start after 10 minutes’ pre-task planning significantly more formulaic expressions (t=2.84,
time, they talked until they had nothing more to add. p<0.05) than students in this study confirmed the
The researchers did not interrupt when the subjects findings of the other studies from Granger, 2008 [16].
were interacting. Adding up the planning time and However, with the teachers, the standard deviation for
task time, the two tasks took around 40 minutes to the use of formulaic expression measurement was
finish. There were also individual interviews also greater than that of the students, meaning that the
immediately after each of the two tasks in which teachers showed greater individual variations than the
questions about the subjects’ planning behavior were students in this respect.
asked. However, data from the interviews were not
analyzed because the primary focus was put on the Table 1. Use of Formulaic Expressions by Teachers and
subjects’ use of formulaic sequences. Students
2.4 Data Analysis Types Tokens Mean number of
The performances of the subjects in the two tasks formulaic
were recorded using a digital audio recorder. The two expressions
hours of recordings were transcribed to form a (tokens) per
20,000-word corpus. The transcribed texts were then minute
analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The Students 41 351 4.81 (SD=1.10)
first step was to identify formulaic sequences with the Teachers 47 319 7.01 (SD=2.18)
help of a corpus tool called Word Smith 4.0. As 3.2 Interaction Between Teachers/Students
mentioned in the previous sections, formulaic Factor and Task Type
sequences were operationalized in this study as a By further dividing the mean use of formulaic
continuous sequence of at least 3 words that occurred language by teachers and students according to task
in the same form (inflections of plural and tense type, it was found that teachers in the picture task and
excluded) at least 4 times in at least 4 out of the 20 students in the picture task recorded respectively the
transcript in the corpus. In the search, abbreviations highest and lowest amount of formulaic expressions
like –‘s, -‘ll, -‘d were taken as equal to their original use (refer to table 6). In the middle was teachers in the
form is, will, would, and thus he’ll are two words. problem-solving task, followed by the students in the
In order to preserve the objectivity of the study, problem-solving task.
all recurrent sequences extracted by automatic
retrieval were not filtered. The unit of measurement Table 2. Mean Use of Formulaic Expressions per minute
for use of formulaic sequences was number of by teachers and students in the two tasks
sequences per minute. For the relationship of
formulaic performance with fluency and discourse n Mean SD
organization, the data were coded with time features Picture Task NNS 10 3.90 1.81
with a sound wave editor software called Goldwave NS 10 8.52 3.58
Version 4.26. This editor software helped to process Problem- NNS 10 5.24 1.48
the digitized recordings by visualizing the sound solving Task NS 10 6.37 2.81
waves on the screen. Combining audio and visual
evidence, the researcher was able to measure, correct Even though the teachers were found to have
to milliseconds, the duration of each turn and pause. used more formulaic sequences in the two tasks than
Following Freed, 1995 [15], a pause in this study was the students, the difference between them in the
defined as an unfilled (silent) pause of 0.4 seconds or problem-solving task was very small. While teachers
longer. With the information about the duration of and students in this study differed significantly in
turns and pauses, fluency-related indicator variables their use of formulaic sequences in the picture task
such as speech rate and pausing rate, number of turns, (t=3.64, p<0.01), there were no statistical significance
mean duration of turns were calculated. in their difference in the problem-solving task.
(t=1.13, n.s.).
Correlation between subjects‘ individual
performance in the picture task and the problem-
solving task, surprisingly, was not significant (r=1.15,
n.s.). This means the subjects‘ pattern of use of
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