SavedAdd your journal

Journals / Dil Eğitimi ve Araştırmaları Dergisi / 2026 / Cilt: 11 Sayı: 1

Will or Be Going To? Uncovering Formulaic Patterns of Future Marking in L2 Academic English

Will ya da Be Going To? Yabancı Dil Olarak Akademik İngilizcede Gelecek Zaman İşaretleyicilerinin Kalıplaşmış Dil Örüntülerinin Ortaya Çıkarılması

Fatih Ünal Bozdağ(OSMANİYE KORKUT ATA ÜNİVERSİTESİ)0000-0002-9959-4704
Pages
284–304
Publication Date
2025-04-30
🏛️Bibliographic metadata and full text access for this article are provided via DergiPark.
DergiPark Record ↗
✨

AI Summary & Key Takeaways

AI Insight
⚡ TL;DR(Too Long; Didn't Read)

The findings reveal a strong preference for will (96.2%) over be going to (3.8%) across all groups.

📌 3 Key Takeaways

🎯
Objective & Hypothesis:This study examines how learners from different first language backgrounds express future time in academic English writing, focusing on will and be going to constructions.
📊
Key Findings & Data:Drawing on a corpus of academic texts from 25 language backgrounds, the research investigates patterns of future time expressions across linguistic groups.
💡
Conclusion & Impact:The findings reveal a strong preference for will (96.2%) over be going to (3.8%) across all groups.
🔬Design:Araştırma Makalesi
📍Scope:Comprehensive Sample
⚙️Variables:gelecek zaman ifadeleri · öğrenici İngilizcesi · Dillerarası etki

Abstract

This study examines how learners from different first language backgrounds express future time in academic English writing, focusing on will and be going to constructions. Drawing on a corpus of academic texts from 25 language backgrounds, the research investigates patterns of future time expressions across linguistic groups. The findings reveal a strong preference for will (96.2%) over be going to (3.8%) across all groups. While will appears uniformly throughout texts, be going to is used more selectively, indicating distinct functional roles. The study also documents variations in the density of future expressions per text, ranging from 2.30 to 4.85, and systematic differences in how future markers combine with different parts of speech. These results suggest that will has developed into a formulaic element in academic writing and contribute to the understanding of formulaic language in second language acquisition.

Özet

Bu çalışma, farklı anadil geçmişlerine sahip öğrencilerin akademik İngilizce yazımında gelecek zamanı nasıl ifade ettiklerini, özellikle will ve be going to yapılarına odaklanarak incelemektedir. 25 farklı dil grubundan oluşan akademik metinler derlemi üzerinden, dil grupları arasındaki gelecek zaman ifadelerinin örüntüleri araştırılmıştır. Bulgular, tüm gruplarda will (%96.2) yapısının be going to (%3.8) yapısına göre belirgin şekilde tercih edildiğini ortaya koymaktadır. Will yapısı metinlerde düzenli olarak görülürken, be going to yapısının daha seçici kullanımı, farklı işlevsel rollere işaret etmektedir. Çalışma ayrıca, metin başına düşen gelecek zaman ifadelerinin yoğunluğunun 2.30 ile 4.85 arasında değiştiğini ve gelecek zaman işaretleyicilerinin farklı sözcük türleriyle sistematik birleşim farklılıklarını belgelemektedir. Bu sonuçlar, will yapısının akademik yazımda kalıplaşmış bir öge haline geldiğini göstermekte ve ikinci dil ediniminde kalıp dilin anlaşılmasına katkı sağlamaktadır

🔖

Cite This Article

Bozdağ, F. Ü. (2025). Will or Be Going To? Uncovering Formulaic Patterns of Future Marking in L2 Academic English. Dil Eğitimi ve Araştırmaları Dergisi, Cilt: 11 Sayı: 1, 284–304. https://doi.org/10.31464/jlere.1631941

📄 Full Text PDF Viewer

📄

PDF görüntüleyici hazırlanıyor...

References (54)

  1. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). Tense and aspect in second language acquisition: Form, meaning, and use. Blackwell.
  2. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2002). A new starting point? Investigating formulaic use and input in future expression. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24(2), 189–198.
  3. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2004). The future in the past: The acquisition of the present progressive with future time reference. In J. M. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 133–154). John Benjamins.
  4. Berglund, Y. (1997). Future in present-day English: Corpus-based evidence on the rivalry of will and be going to. In M. Ljung (Ed.), Corpus-based studies in English: Papers from the seventeenth international conference on English language research on computerized corpora (ICAME 17) (pp. 31–43). Rodopi.
  5. Biber, D., & Barbieri, F. (2007). Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers. English for Specific Purposes, 26(3), 263–286.
  6. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Longman.
  7. Bishop, J. (2018). Processing constraints on L2 formulaic sequence acquisition: Evidence from a corpus of learner speech. Language Learning, 68(2), 465–495.
  8. Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press.
  9. Chen, Y.-H., & Baker, P. (2010). Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing. Language Learning & Technology, 14(2), 30–49.
  10. Clancy, B. (2016). Prosody and the disambiguation of future temporal reference in English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 1–16.
  11. Collins, P. (2009). Modals and quasi-modals in English. Rodopi.
  12. Conklin, K., & Schmitt, N. (2012). The processing of formulaic language. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 45–61.
  13. Declerck, R. (2006). The grammar of the English tense system: A comprehensive analysis. Mouton de Gruyter.
  14. DeKeyser, R. (2015). Skill acquisition theory. In B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction (pp. 97–114). Routledge.
  15. Ellis, N. C. (1997). Vocabulary acquisition: Word structure, collocation, and meaning. In M. McCarthy & N. Schmidt (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 122–139). Cambridge University Press.
  16. Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24(2), 143–188.
  17. Ellis, N. C. (2006). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 164–194.
  18. Ellis, N. C., Simpson-Vlach, R., & Maynard, C. (2008). Formulaic language in native and second language speakers: Psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 42(3), 375–396.
  19. François, T., & Albakry, M. (2021). Strategic simplification in L2 production: Evidence from temporal reference. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 43(1), 1–25.
  20. Granger, S., Dagneaux, E., Meunier, F., & Paquot, M. (2020). The international corpus of learner English (Version 3). Presses universitaires de Louvain.
  21. Hilpert, M. (2008). The future of “going to”: A corpus-based diachronic analysis. In A. Ziegler (Ed.), Corpora, creativity, and cognition: Theory, method, and practice (pp. 133–154). Narr.
  22. Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. Routledge.
  23. Honnibal, M., Montani, I., Van Landeghem, S., & Boyd, A. (2020). spaCy: Industrial-strength natural language processing in Python. https://spacy.io/
  24. Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C. (2003). Grammaticalization (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  25. Huddleston, R., & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge University Press.
  26. Jarvis, S. (2000). Methodological rigor in the study of transfer: Identifying L1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon. Language Learning, 50(2), 245–309.
  27. Kecskes, I. (2007). Formulaic language in English lingua franca. In I. Kecskes & L. Horn (Eds.), Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and intercultural aspects (pp. 191–219). Mouton de Gruyter.
  28. Kellerman, E. (1995). Crosslinguistic influence: Transfer to nowhere? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 15, 125–150.
  29. Klein, W. (2009). How time is encoded. In W. Klein & P. Li (Eds.), The expression of time (pp. 39–82). Mouton de Gruyter.
  30. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford University Press.
  31. Leech, G. (1971). Meaning and the English verb. Longman.
  32. Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics (Vols. 1–2). Cambridge University Press.
  33. Mair, C. (2006). Twentieth-century English: History, variation and standardization. Cambridge University Press.
  34. Myhill, J. (1992). Typological discourse analysis: The language of evaluation. Continuum.
  35. Odlin, T. (2003). Cross-linguistic influence. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 436–486). Blackwell.
  36. Palmer, F. R. (1979). Modality and the English modals. Longman.
  37. Palmer, F. R. (1990). Mood and modality. Cambridge University Press.
  38. Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 191–226). Longman.
  39. Peters, E. (2016). Formulaic language in L2 acquisition: The effects of frequency, semantic transparency, and type of target language. Language Learning, 66(2), 303–333.
  40. Poplack, S., & Tagliamonte, S. (2000). The grammaticization of going to in (African American) English. Language Variation and Change, 11(3), 315–342.
  41. Ringbom, H. (2007). Cross-linguistic similarity in foreign language learning. Multilingual Matters.
  42. Robinson, P. (2005). Cognitive complexity and task sequencing: Studies in a componential framework for second language task design. IRAL – International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 43(1), 1–32.
  43. Salaberry, R., & Comajoan, L. (2002). The acquisition of English tense-aspect morphology: A generative perspective. In R. Salaberry & Y. Shirai (Eds.), The L2 acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (pp. 1–31). John Benjamins.
  44. Schmitt, N. (2004). Formulaic sequences: Acquisition, processing, and use. John Benjamins.
  45. Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford University Press.
  46. Skehan, P., & Foster, P. (2001). Cognition and tasks. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction(pp. 183–205). Cambridge University Press.
  47. Slobin, D. I. (1996). From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking.” In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 70–96). Cambridge University Press.
  48. Tagliamonte, S. (2006). Analysing sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge University Press.
  49. Tremblay, A., Derwing, B., & Libben, G. (2011). Processing advantages of lexical bundles: Evidence from self-paced reading and sentence recall. Language Learning, 61(2), 569–613.
  50. VanPatten, B. (2002). Processing instruction: An update. Language Learning, 52(4), 755–803.
  51. Wood, D. (2015). Fundamentals of formulaic language: An introduction. Bloomsbury.
  52. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press.
  53. Wray, A. (2008). Formulaic language: Pushing the boundaries. Oxford University Press.
  54. Wulff, S. (2018). Formulaicity in L2 acquisition. In P. Booth & J. Swann (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 442–456). Routledge.