Cognitive Processing of Formulaic Sequences in English as a Foreign Language Students

Abstract

Formulaic sequences (FSs) have received considerable attention in second language (L2) research due to their contribution to language fluency and communicative efficiency. However, existing studies have predominantly focused on the frequency and distribution of formulaic sequences in learner output, providing limited insight into how such expressions are cognitively processed during language production. This study employed a qualitative descriptive design. The participants were three Indonesian EFL students enrolled in the English Language Education Study Program (ELESP), Universitas Negeri Gorontalo. Data were collected through Think-Aloud Protocols (TAP), academic writing tasks, and Stimulated Recall Interviews (SRI). The data were analyzed thematically to identify recurring patterns in formulaic sequence processing, challenges, and strategies. The findings revealed three major processing types: complete retrieval, adjusted retrieval, and compositional retrieval. Complete retrieval was evident in discourse-organizing and idiomatic FS, which were frequently retrieved holistically as single units. Adjusted retrieval occurred when learners initially retrieved a FS holistically but subsequently modified it to better suit communicative and rhetorical demands. Compositional retrieval emerged when learners constructed expressions through conscious lexical evaluation, collocational assessment, and grammatical monitoring. In addition, three recurring challenges were identified: topic familiarity constraints, lexical evaluation difficulties, and broader cognitive demands associated with coordinating writing, monitoring, and verbalization simultaneously. The findings also revealed three principal strategies during processing: context-dependent selection, familiarity-based retrieval, and intuition-guided substitution. Overall, the findings suggest that formulaic sequence processing among Indonesian EFL learners involves a dynamic interaction between holistic retrieval and analytical evaluation rather than reliance on a single processing mechanism.