ROTE OR RULE - EXPLORING THE ROLE OF FORMULAIC LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOM FOREIGN-LANGUAGE LEARNING

This article investigates the role in learning of rote-learned formula s or chunks. We examined data from a longitudinal study of 16 child be ginner classroom learners of French for occurrences of three chunks, a gainst which we first tried out definitional criteria. We then tracked these forms for 2 years to chart their breakdown and explore their co ntribution to the development of a creative language capacity. Our dat a showed that most of the learners not only gradually ''unpacked'' the ir early chunks,but also used parts of them productively in the genera tion of new utterances. These findings demonstrated that rote-learning of formulas and the construction of rules are not independent process es, but interact and actively feed into one another.