The Effects of Different Pedagogical Interventions on EFL Learners’ ‎Receptive and Productive Knowledge of Formulaic Sequences

This study sought to investigate the effects of Explicit Instruction in combination with Input Enhancement (EI+IE), Input Flood (IF), and Gap-fill (GF) tasks on receptive and productive knowledge of English formulaic sequences (FS) by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. Assigned to three experimental groups, the 110 participants took the receptive and productive knowledge pretests, posttests, and delayed posttests. Findings of within-group (repeated-measures ANOVAs) and between-group (ANCOVAs) tests showed that while IF could not promote learners' performance, both the EI+IE and the GF could improve learners’ receptive and productive knowledge of target FSs from pretests to posttests and retained the effects until the delayed posttests. Additionally, both EI+IE and GF groups significantly outperformed the IF group at the immediate posttests. That is, the results from EI+IE did not differ significantly from those of GF. Plausible accounts for the obtained results are provided and the implications are discussed.