The Role of Formulaic Sequences in Assisting Language Development and Its Importance in Iranian EFL Textbooks

Abstract

This article makes an attempt to shed light on the role of formulaic sequences in second
language acquisition and second language classroom. The most useful impact of formulaic sequences
(hereafter FSs) is to help learners to achieve native-like proficiency, what is rarely gained through
second language acquisition. In addition to native- like, FSs foster learners' accuracy and fluency. One
of the aims of second language acquisition is to increase learners' communicative competence and one
of the components of the communicative competence is strategic competence to which FSs belong. So
material providers should include these expressions in textbooks and teachers should consider them as a
part of their lesson plan in order to equip learners with these expressions so that learners can apply
them as communication strategies in specific contexts. After surveying the textbooks of high school based
on Swan's classification, we came to a conclusion that only few expressions of two categories of this
framework, fixed phrases and collocation, could be found very rarely, in other words, formulaic
sequences do not get any attention and importance in Iranian EFL textbooks.