141 EEJ 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej The Realization of Formulaic Competence in the Classroom Interactions among Learners in Kampung Inggris Pare Luluk Khoiriyah, Januarius Mujiyanto Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Article Info ______________ Article History: Accepted 30 January 2022 Approved 8 March 2022 Published 20 June 2022 ________________ Keywords: Formulaic expressions, Speaking fluency, Learners’ interaction. ______________ Abstract A critical component in communicative competence is formulaic competence, enabling learners to create natural and fluent spoken and written texts. This competence refers to recurrent fixed expressions used by native speakers to communicate in daily life, such as collocations, idioms, lexical bundles, and insert/routines. This study aimed to investigate the formulaic expression by exposing Celce-Murcia (2007) and Biber et al.'s (1999) theory in the classroom interactions among learners in Kampung Inggris Pare. In addition, it used Lennon's (1990) theory to investigate the influence of formulaic language on the learners' fluency. A qualitative approach, exposing conversational analysis, was adopted to analyze the gathered data to fulfill the research objectives. The data were collected by observing the learners' interactions, including recording during the conversation. Thus, the current study reveals that Kampung Inggris, Pare learners produced all types of formulaic expressions. However, due to a lack of collocational awareness, they made simple combinations and tended to avoid more complex words with more than two particles. In addition, the learners who produced many formulaic expressions have high exclusive rates implying that the more formulaic expressions are used, the higher the fluency level will be obtained. Correspondence Address: Kampus PascasarjanaUnnes, Jl. Kelud III Semarang 50237 Email: khoiriyah.luluk93@gmail.com p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 142 INTRODUCTION Considering the increasing importance of learners' communicative competence as well as formulaic competence, the present study served to take the formulaic language use and investigated the influence of formulaic expressions on learners’ fluency. There is an urgent need to investigate this matter since the ultimate goal of teaching and learning English is communicative competence aiming at how learners create texts in an appropriate context. A critical component in communicative competence is formulaic competence, enabling learners to develop natural and fluent spoken and written texts. This competence refers to recurrent fixed chunks/expressions used by native speakers to communicate in daily life, such as collocations, idioms, lexical frames, and routines. Some researchers have studied formulaic expressions as they realized the importance of communicating. Bumbak (2018) analyzed the types and frequency of formulaic expressions used in EFL classrooms in the context of Croatian high schools, especially in rather spontaneous discourse and non- influenced classroom conditions. It deals with extensive classification and exposition of the most frequent types and the students' mistakes when using formulaic expressions connecting with communicative demands. Moreover, native English speakers rely on prefabricated formulas made in various sequences rather than generating new single- word sentences that may be bounded by grammatical rules (Guz, 2014). The same goes for language learners; it will need an easy process to rely on agreed expressions rather than trying to construct novel sentences to translate their thoughts. Kecskes (2007) argued that non-native speakers find it difficult to produce natural expressions because non-native speakers have different language experiences from English native speakers. Language experience cannot be separated from the speaker's everyday reality, and the reality of speaking in English culture tends to contain lots of formulaic expressions to communicate. In fact, many learners in Kampung Inggris, Pare were difficult to produce formulaic expressions so that their utterances sound unnatural. Therefore, it became a trigger to study about formulaic competence in Kampung Inggris, Pare. Furthermore, formulaic competence is helpful to manage speech production that is easing the cognitive burden, as explained by Wray (2008, p. 75). “It buys time; language processing includes the struggle to retain fluency and sustaining output, which is planning what to say next”. Thus, learners use formulaic expressions as a productive strategy in saving effort and attention while speaking; because of their holistic nature, they are acquired, memorized, and holistically automatically retained from long-term memory without conscious effort, attention, or control which leads to more fluent speech production. In addition, Celce-Murcia (2007) added that it is very useful for a language student to learn formulaic expressions to sound fluent in speaking A number of studies have been concerned with establishing formulaic expressions in spoken and written discourse. The studies in this field investigated either in the classroom interaction (Aliurridha & Setiawan, 2019; Colle & Fitriati, 2019; Bumbak, 2018; Khusnita & Rukmini, 2016; Zubir, 2016), or in English textbooks (Namaziandost et al., 2020; Samodra & Pratiwi, 2018); Jönsson, 2017; Sugiati & Rukmini, 2017, Heng et al., 2014), or in pragmatic resources (Mugford, 2016; Winarto & Tanjung, 2015). It is noted that several studies examined the correlation between formulaic competence and speaking fluency quantitatively (Qizi, 2021; Kholidah, 2020; McGuire, 2015; Ustunbas & Ortactepe, 2014; Guz, 2014). While the recent study applied qualitative method. Moreover, the present study applied conversational analysis while there were no previous studies applied it for EFL learners. This research is also very significant because it is similar to Celce-Murcia's idea about formulaic competence in the way that formulaic language used by the learners was related to learners’ fluency moreover in speaking. In addition, this study is also relevant since the previous studies conducted on EFL class Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 143 are the same way the recent study conducted on EFL learners in Kampung Inggris, Pare. Therefore, it can be assumed that an exposure to formulaic expressions and the influence on the learners' fluency is essential for language learners. The present study served to take the formulaic language exposing Celce-Murcia (2007) and Biber et al.’s theory (1999). It also disclosed Lennon’s theory (1990) to investigate the influence of formulaic language on learners’ fluency.To reach a comprehensive analysis, the study exploredsix questions: (1) how are idiomatic phrases realized in learners’ interaction?; (2) how are combinations of verbs and particles realized in learners’ interaction?; (3) how are coordinated binomial phrases realized in learners’ interaction ?; (4) how are lexical bundles realized in learners’ interaction ?; (5) how are inserts realizedin learners’interaction ?; (6) how do the formulaic expressions influence the learners’ fluency?. METHODS In the recent study, a qualitative approach was applied to expose conversational analysis. The subjects of the study were seventeen learners in two courses; nine learners from the Excellent Course and eight learners from the Golden Institute Kampung Inggris, Pare. They were divided into six groups consisting of two to three learners. The object of the study was the interactions among learners. The interactions were in the form of utterances and taken through the learners’ discussion with a given topic about family. The unit of analysis was words, phrases, and clauses from utterances in their interaction. The study used two instruments. They were audio recordings and a list of formulaic expressions proposed by Biber et al. (1999). The list covered the idiomatic phrases, free combinations of verb + particle, coordinated binomial phrases, lexical bundles, and inserts. The formulaic expressions were identified and classified based on Biber et al. (1999). After that, the frequency of occurrence of formulaic expressions was also analyzed to see the influence of formulaic language on the learners' fluency based on Lennon's (1990) theory. Finally, the findings were compared to Biber et al.'s (1999) theory and explained qualitatively. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS This section presents the findings and discusses the types of formulaic expressions comprising idiomatic phrases, coordinated binomial phrases, free combinations of verb and particle, lexical bundles, and insertsused in the learners' interaction. In addition, it also discusses the influence of the formulaic expressions on the learner's fluency. Realization of Idiomatic Phrases The present study found that there were three types of idiomatic phrases. Phrasal verbs It consists of a verb followed by an adverbial particle. In the learners' interaction, it was found that there was one phrasal verb, "get through." Prepositional Verbs A prepositional verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition. There were many prepositional verbs found in the learners' interactions, such as "consist of," "feel like," "look for," "depend on," etc. Here, a learner used an incorrect expression: "Don't believe in her." Basically, the prepositional verb expression was accurately produced. However, "believe in" is considered inappropriate based on the context. The prepositional verb "believe in" means to have faith that something exists. What was meant by the speaker was to accept that someone's words were valid. Thus, the prepositional verb "believe in" should not be used in this context. Other Multi-word Verb Constructions This type consisted of three main constructions: verb + prepositional phrase combinations, verb + verb phrase combinations, and verb + noun phrase combinations (Biber et al., 1999). Out of these three constructions, only one construction existed in learners' interaction: the verb + noun phrase combination, "take responsibility." Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 144 However, not all expressions were correctly produced by the learners. There was a time when the learner produced incorrect idiomatic phrases. The learner used verb + noun phrase combination to use "did a mistake" instead of "made a mistake." This is considered incorrect as it was merely translated from Indonesian to English which means “melakukan kesalahan”. Based on Biber et al.'s (1999) lists of idiomatic phrases, however, the verb should be "make" or "made." In this study, the phrasal-prepositional verb was not found in the data. In Biber et al. (1999), the phrasal-prepositional verb is constructed from phrasal verb and preposition, which principally has more than two particles, such as "come up with" and "get away from." On the contrary, the three idiomatic phrases found in the data consisted of two particles, for example, "feel like," which was used most frequently. It is assumed that the learners tend to avoid the more complex word consisting of more than two particles. It is in accordance with the study conducted by Zubir et al. (2016), which revealed that the learners did not particularly avoid phrasal verbs; however, it was found that they would avoid phrasal verbs with complex combinations that they are less exposed to. Furthermore, as known earlier, the result showed some incorrect expressions of idiomatic phrases. The incompatibility of the prepositional verb "believe in" and the incorrectness of multi word-verb construction "make a mistake" prove that some learners encounter difficulties comprehending the meaning of idiomatic phrases. Aliurridha and Setiawan (2019) stated that we need to know the meaning of the idiomatic phrases as a complete unit and not the meaning of its verb and particle in a separable form, as in "believe in." One possible explanation to the fact that the learners, which are notably EFL students, lack an ability to comprehend the meaning of idiomatic phrases and are incapable of using them in their interaction is since idiomatic phrases in English carry a different meaning that is different from the common idiomatic phrase in their first language (L1) which is Bahasa Indonesia. Realization of Free Combinations of Verb and Particle The second form of formulaic expressions existed in the learners' interaction is combination of verb and particle. Verb + particle-free combinations are combinations of verb and particle, but they have literal meanings. There was only one free combination of verb and particle used, "come back." The phrase "come back" was freely combined and regarded not as a structural unit. According to Biber et al. (1999), “free combinations of verb + particle, such as go in and work in, do not have idiomatic status and should not be regarded as a structural unit” (p. 1029). Biber et al. (1999) listed sixty-two free combinations of verb and particle consisting of two particles and more than two particles. While "come back" was formed from verb and adverb, consisting of two particles. In other words, the learners preferred using the simplex combination of collocation. As stated by Bywater (1969) as cited in Folse (2004), the combinations of verb and particle were a challenging area of English- language learning and teaching. He added that there are some problematic aspects concerning this phrase in which, one of them is the lack of collocational awareness. Realization of Coordinated Binomial Phrases It is the third form of formulaic expression. Based on Biber et al. (1999), coordinated binomial phrases consist of two words from the same grammatical category, coordinated by either and or or including coordinated nouns, coordinated adjectives, coordinated verbs, and coordinated adverbs. In the present study, the learners used coordinated nouns such as"mom and dad," "mother and father," and "brother and sister." These words were produced due to a topic- related which was about family. One of the practical functions of binomial phrases is to simplify the expressions. Instead of saying "our brother and our sister," one of the learners expressed "our brother and sister." This is in line with Qizi (2021), who mentioned that: "native English speakers regularly use binomial phrases Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 145 because they are often catchy and are easy expressions to sound like a native speaker." Nevertheless, the use of the other categories of binomial phrases, consisting of coordinated adjectives, coordinated verbs, and coordinated adverbs, did not occur. Therefore, the learners were relatively rare to use binomial phrases in their interaction. Realization Lexical Bundles Personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase Personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase is the first type of lexical bundle identified in the study. The personal pronouns used were "I", "he", "we", "you", and "they". The negative auxiliary "don't" also occurred in this type, as well as some main verbs such as "think" and "want," and some semi-modal verb like "is going to". The personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase identified involved "He said to me", "I think I should", "I want to ask", "Yeah, I know but", etc. The negative auxiliary was found, such as "I don't know what" and "I don't think it". In addition, the findings of data analysis revealed that there were some semi-modal verbs existed like "we are going to". This bundle was included as one of personal pronoun + lexical verb phrases because it composed of four words. However, it should consist of three words as in "we are going to". Pronoun/noun phrase + be The study only discovered one out of thirty-four combinations of pronoun + be as listed based on Biber et al.'s (1999) that was "it's up to you". Verb phrase with active verb This type falls into three classifications: lexical bundles with different main verbs (have, go, get, put, see, want), lexical bundles with modal/semi-modal verbs, and lexical bundles with other verbs. However, from these classifications, lexical bundles with modal/semi- modal verbs existed in learners' interaction as in "have to do it". Wh-question fragment This type is used to get some information. Moreover, it has wh-question words; "what" and "how". They were "how do you feel", "what do you think", and "what do you call it". Other expressions There are three kinds of bundles included in other expressions. However, there was only one discovered that was two recurrent interactive bundles as in "no no no," which marked emphatic negation. The study resulted in three kinds of expressions in three-word bundles, while nineteen kinds of expressions were formed in four-word bundles. Similarly, in their research, Heng et al. (2014) found that four-word bundles were the most frequently occurred in the writing studies. They also noted that the most researched length for writing studies was probably its manageability in size. Four-word bundles have a more distinct array in structure than three-word units. Thus, according to the long-form, the use of lexical bundles by the learners was relatively substantial. Furthermore, the study also found that personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase was the lexical bundle that was mostly produced. While the other types of lexical bundles, such as pronoun + be, verb phrase with active verb, wh- question fragment, and other expressions, were few. It is different from the research results conducted by Samodra and Pratiwi (2018), which indicated that other prepositional phrase fragments took first place in terms of their frequency. Afterward, there were still many lexical bundle types that were not practically used since only five out of fourteen types of lexical bundles were identified. It is determined that compared with the number of lexical bundles on lists, the learners were limited to use it. Realization of Inserts Inserts are the last form of formulaic expressions found. Based on their functions, inserts can be classified into some classifications. All types occurred in the learners' interaction except attention signals and polite formulae. Interjections Interjection has expressive of the speaker's emotions, such as surprise, unexpectedness, or emotional arousal. There were some words Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 146 found, including "oh", "our", "so yeah", and "wow". Moreover, the data analysis findings showed that there were two typical interjections. The first interjection was "ooohh"; the second interjection was "ooooo". These two interjections should follow either the British or American English transcriptions to be formulaic expressions. In English transcriptions, the first interjection is supposed to be "oh" whereas the second hesitator is supposed to be "ooo". Greetings and farewells There is only one greeting word discovered that is "hi". Discourse markers This type usually occurs at the beginning of a turn or utterance. It signals interactively how the speakers manage the dialogue. It also makes non-natives sound like native speakers because the native speakers customarily tend to use many discourse markers in their daily conversation. It has been found that there were three words for discourse markers such as "I mean", "well," and "you know". Responseelicitors Response elicitors are defined as general question tags added at the end of a statement, question, or directive. Only one out of six words found that was "right". "Right" is a response elicitor that functions like tag questions to confirm or check information or ask for agreement. Response form Response forms are used to respond to a previous remark by different speakers. They can be divided into two types: positive and negative response forms. All of them can be used to respond to questions, statements, or directives. There were many response forms found, for instance, "huh-uh", "I see"," of course", "okay", "really". Furthermore, the most frequent response form used is "yeah." Hesitators Hesitators function to enable the speakers to pause in the middle of a message while they wish to continue speaking. Hesitators produced were "er" and "um". However, the hesitator "hum" was a typical hesitator in conversational texts of English textbooks since it does not follow both British and American English transcriptions. Therefore, it is classified as an inaccurate hesitator. Expletives The expletive found in learners' interactions was "oh my God". The learner used it as swear words or semi-taboo expressions to express exclamations, especially in reacting to some strongly negative experience. Insert occurred most frequently. Two out of nine types of inserts were discovered. The number of the expressions was also excessively used. Likewise, Kholidah (2020) resulted the same finding that the most frequent form of formulaic expressions in their study is inserts. Interactions in dialogue or conversation attract the learners to interchangeably interact (Ustunbas & Ortactepe, 2014). Besides, insert in Biber et al. (1999) consists of many linguistic devices prominently related to interactions such as interjection response forms, response elicitors, greetings, and farewells. Therefore, it is not surprising that these forms were actively produced by the learners, especially interjections such as "oh" and response forms such as "huh-uh" and "really," which leads to a conclusion that the learners have interactively communicated. In addition, the most frequent insert was hesitators, expressed thirty-five times by the learners. Some did not use it, and some used it excessively instead. For example, one of the learners produced four hesitators in a time. "Mmmm I, I'm a, I'm a mother, I'm a mother so we, er I, we. I as a mother can do anymore for example cook, teach, er, teach education, eer, learn about mathematic....." Hesitators are one of the formulaic aspects which determine learners' communicative competence. Pawley (2007) noted an essential constituent of communicative competence in English: the speaker must be able regularly to encode whole clauses in their full lexical detail in a single encoding operation and avoid the need for hesitations. Thus, it was concluded that learners with fewer hesitators might have communicative competence. Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 147 The Influence of Formulaic Expressions on Learners' Fluency To know the influence of formulaic expressions on the learners' speaking fluency, the learners' fluency was first analyzed based on the utterances in the conversations using the fluency measurement by Cross (2005). The analysis was classified based on the discussion group of the learners. After analyzing the utterances, the data were used to be judgment consideration for speaking fluency assessment using this criteria: >130= very good, 91 – 130= good, 51 – 90= fair, 0 – 50= poor. While doing the discussion, some learners were nervous to speak and did many pauses and repetitions. In measuring the result, the researchers tolerated their grammatical mistake and pronunciation since the focus was on fluency. Table 1 shows the result of the learners in speaking fluency of each group. Table 1. Fluency Measurement of All Groups Group TWA TST Pause FST TWD Exclusive Rate (word /minute) in Average A 266 108 2 106 15 150 B 315 139 4 135 8 132 C 275 273 6 267 70 50 D 619 412 18 394 55 79 E 440 303 14 289 33 92 F 905 366 3 363 67 137 Table 1 shows that the total speaking time (TST) of group A is 108 seconds, and the total fluent time (FST) is 106 seconds. They were able to utter 266 words in 108 seconds. To decide the fluent duration in the dialogue, the fluent speaking duration (FST) was measured by calculating the total speaking time (TST) minus the pause. So, the fluent duration of group A was 106 seconds, and the disfluent words (TWD) produced by the learners in this group were 15 words, including repetition, repair, and filled pause. While their average exclusive speaking rate was 150 words per minute which means the learners' fluency in group A was very good. Group B did a 139-second dialogue or 2.31 minutes with a total of words 315, while the fluent duration was 135 or 2.25 minutes because they made pauses four times. The table 1 shows the group's exclusive rate was 132. This rate is considered high since the disfluent words (TWD) they produced were only eight words. They produced a few repetitions and filled pauses, and some repairs. Therefore, the speaking fluency of the learners in this group was very good. The result demonstrated that the total speaking time of group C was 273, and the total fluent time was 267. The learners of this group could utter 275 words in 273 seconds. Furthermore, the number of disfluent words was 70. The learners did many repetitions and repairs. Since their TWD was high while the TFT was low, the average exclusive speaking rate was 50 words per minute which means the learners' fluency in group C was poor. Compared with the previous group, group D is considered better in fluency. This group did a 412-second dialogue and gained 619 words with 18 pauses. So, the fluent duration was 394 seconds. There was a high number of disfluent words produced by the learners, 55 words. While, according to the average exclusive rate, which was 79 words per minute, they are considered to have an adequate proficiency level of ability in fluency. According to table 1, group E produced 440 words within 303 seconds. In comparison, the total duration of fluent time was 289 because they did 14 pauses. The learners also produced several disfluent words, which affected the exclusive rate. It was shown that their TWD was Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 148 33. Thus, their average exclusive speaking rate was 92 words per minute which means the learners' fluency in group E was still considered good. Furthermore, table 1 shows that the last group, group F, did a 366-second dialogue and produced 905 words. The learners in this group were rare to do pausing, which was only three times compared with the length of the dialogue, and the disfluent words produced were 67, including repairs, repetitions, and filled pauses. The exclusive rate of this group was 137, which is concluded that the learners were very good at speaking fluency. The percentage of formulaic expressions used and the exclusive rate representing the learners' fluency were analyzed to know the influence of formulaic expressions on learners' fluency. The percentage of formulaic expressions was obtained from all types of formulaic expressions produced by the learners in each group. However, one of the types of inserts, hesitators, was excluded as Lennon (1990) mentioned that fluency is one of the speaking sub- skills determined by speaking at a normal rate without hesitations or pauses between stretches of speech. Table 2 summarizes formulaic expressions used by all groups of learners. Table 2. Formulaic Expressions of All Group Group Idiomatic Phrases Free Combinationof Verb & Particle Binomial Phrases Lexical Bundle Insert (hesitator excluded) Formulaic Expression used (%) A 2 0 0 8 4 13,2 B 4 0 1 2 2 7.1 C 0 0 0 7 1 4.8 D 15 0 1 11 13 6.4 E 3 6 0 6 9 6,8 F 14 0 7 12 60 10,2 From Table 2, it is apparent that formulaic expressions used by group A were 13.2%, the group that produced formulaic expressions most frequently, and their speaking fluency was very good, seen from their exclusive rate (table 1). While 7.1% of all utterances of group B expressed, contain formulaic expressions. Their speaking rate reached 132 or considered very good at fluency (table 1). On the contrary, Group C was considered a group with the least number of formulaic expressions occurrence since the percentage of formulaic expressions used was only 4.8 %. Their fluency was poor since their exclusive rate was 50 (table 1). Group D and Group E had a similar percentage of use of formulaic expressions. They were 6.4% and 6.8%. Group D had fair fluency since the exclusive rate was under 90, which was 79. Besides, if the exclusive rate was above 90, the fluency was considered good like group E. So, the learners in group E were more fluent in speaking than the learners in group D due to the higher number of formulaic expressions percentage in group E. The last group, group F significantly used formulaic expressions as table 2 showed that the percentage was 10.2%. Their exclusive rate was significantly high so that the learners had a very good fluency. In brief, the learners of Kampung Inggris Pare who produced many formulaic expressions have a high exclusive rate. In like manner, Guz (2014) also claimed that formulaic expressions might directly positively impact learners' English fluency level. Such positive influence is due to the role of formulaic expressions in boosting the automaticity of speech as the learned expressions are stored and retrieved easily without looking for an alternative item of speech leading to a smooth, cooperative, and intelligible conversation. Accordingly, if the learners are to attain formulaic competence, which enables them to create natural and fluent English as native-like, they should be first familiar with which well- constructed sentences are native-like. To achieve Luluk Khoiriyah & Januarius Mujiyanto/ English Education Journal 12 (2) (2022) 141-150 149 this, they must have much exposure to the language as it is spoken in everyday life (Lennon, 1990). In other words, the learners should learn how to speak idiomatically with a formulaic expression because the more formulaic expressions are used, the higher the fluency level will be obtained. CONCLUSIONS This study examines the use of formulaic expressions, including the idiomatic phrase, the combination of verb and particle, binomial phrases, lexical bundle, insert, and the influence of formulaic expressions on the learners' fluency. Given the findings of the data analysis from the previous chapter, it can be summarized as follows: All forms of formulaic expressions were found in the study. However, some sub- categories expressions were not used in each form, such as idiomatic phrases. It was only found three out of five. In addition, the incorrectness of multi-word-verb construction like "did a mistake" shows that some learners encounter difficulties in comprehending the meaning of idiomatic phrases. Furthermore, in producing formulaic expressions, the learners tend to avoid more complex words consisting of more than two particles. It is proven that the free combination of verb and particle used consisted of two words, "come back", the simple combination of verb and particle. It is considered that the combination of verb and particle is challenging for the learners due to the lack of collocational awareness. However, the use of lexical bundles of the learners shows some learners used complex words since there were nineteen kinds of expressions formed in four-word bundles. Thus, according to the long-form, the use of lexical bundles is relatively substantial. The learners also used coordinated nouns of binomial phrases such as "mom and dad, "brother and sister". These words were produced due to a topic-related which was about family. The number of the expressions was also excessively used especially insert in the form of interjection such as "oh". It leads to the conclusion that most learners have interactively communicated. The formulaic expressions used by the learners in each group have a different percentage. The study showed that groups with many formulaic expressions produced have a high exclusive rate. For instance, the formulaic expressions percentage of group A is 13.2%, and their speaking fluency is very good. On the contrary, Group C is considered a group with the least number of formulaic expressions, 4.8 %, and their fluency is classified as poor since their exclusive rate is 50. It can be concluded that the more formulaic expressions are used, the higher the fluency level will be obtained. 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