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Part of
Complex Dynamic Systems Theory and L2 Writing Development
Edited by Gary G. Fogal and Marjolijn H. Verspoor
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 54] 2020
► pp. 81–108

Chapter 4
Adaptive imitation

Formulaicity and the words of others in L2 English academic writing

| Australian National University
| University of Melbourne

This chapter explores how L2 academic writers imitate adaptively as they manage the need to communicate academic content using language that aligns with the predictable patterns of the discourse community. Evidence from two studies of L2 writing is combined to explore how writers work with a dynamic store of language chunks as their emergent building blocks. One study, a cross-sectional discourse analysis of the writing of 480 test-takers (Knoch, Macqueen, & O’Hagan, 2014), investigates formulaicity and source text use in two writing tasks. The other, a longitudinal qualitative case study of a student writer (Macqueen, 2012), takes a close-up view of her word combinations and use of source texts as she revises an assignment. Taken together, the findings suggest that the early stages of L2 academic writing are characterized by greater reliance on verbatim imitation of the patterns of others and less formulaicity. Over time, L2 writers represent academic content through interweaving the words of others with their own internalized patterns in increasingly conventional manipulations.

Keywords: formulaic language, imitation, second language writing, academic literacy
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Fluent formulaicity
    • Developmental perspectives on fluent formulaicity
  • Source text imitation
    • Developmental perspectives on source text imitation
  • Two studies
  • Study 1: Cross-sectional study of writing test responses
    • Aim
    • Participants
    • Writing data
    • Analytic method 1: Fluent formulaicity
    • Analytic method 2: Source text imitation
    • Statistical analysis
  • Findings
    • Density of fluent formulae
    • Source text imitation
    • Summary of Study 1
  • Study 2: Longitudinal case study
    • Aim
    • Method
    • Context and focus sentence
    • Identification of source text content and patterns for imitation
    • Adaptive imitation of source text
    • Summary of Study 2
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 4 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.54.04mac
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