Phraseological complexity in EFL learners’ spoken production across proficiency levels

Paquot, Magali and Gablasova, Dana and Brezina, Vaclav and Naets, H. (2022) Phraseological complexity in EFL learners’ spoken production across proficiency levels. In: Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency in Learner Corpus Research :. Studies in Corpus Linguistics . John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 115-136. ISBN 9789027212580

Abstract

This study explores phraseological complexity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ spoken production across proficiency levels in the Trinity Lancaster Corpus. Phraseological diversity and sophistication are operationalized as root type-token ratios and median mutual information scores of verb + object co-occurrences respectively. Results draw a complex picture of phraseological complexity in EFL learners’ oral performance, with phraseological diversity increasing on the whole and phraseological sophistication decreasing significantly from B1 to B2. These findings can at least partly be explained by the fact that, unlike EFL learners at B1, EFL learners at B2 and above repeat fewer combinations and use more specific vocabulary, which sometimes leads to less idiomatic combinations that should nevertheless be considered as traces of qualitative development.