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effectivelylearning words. In the study of second lexical acquisition, the formulaic sequence hasbeen widely adopted as a crucial factor to upgrade one’s English proficiency. Duringrecent decades, more and more linguists have called for further studies on how to useformulaic sequences in second language learning instead of on what linguistic featuresthey have. Lewis (1993) even put forward the lexical approach to tell teachers how toapply the multiword units in language classes. However, neither the theoretical studiesnor the usage-based studies have reached agreement on what is the better way toenhance language knowledge in the process of formulaic sequence acquisition.The involvement load hypothesis offers a feasible way to quantify thetask-induced involvement of different types of tasks. It can be employed to figure outthe influence of task types on the L2 vocabulary learning. However few researches onthis hypothesis have touched upon the acquisition of formulaic sequences. Thus, in thepresent study we will put our emphasis on the influence of task types on the acquisitionof L2 (English) formulaic sequences. The literature review consists of two main parts –studies of the involvement load in different task types, and studies concerningformulaic sequences.

2.1 Studies of Involvement Load in Different Task Types
This section sets out to, first of all, introduce some studies focusing on theinvolvement load hypothesis itself and then present some empirical studies about theapplication of the hypothesis in different task types.It is argued that the acquisition of unfamiliar words depends on the degree ofinvolvement in processing these words in related tasks. Greater involvement leads tobetter the acquisition (Hulstijin & Laufer, 2001: 545). The involvement loadhypothesis attempts to translate the quite general cognitive concepts – depth ofprocessing and elaboration through L2 vocabulary learning tasks. This hypothesis firstoffers the indexes to quantify the involvement loads of tasks, making the operationmore easily. With the help of this hypothesis, it is likely that the involvement loads oftasks can be calculated, including reading tasks, listening tasks, writing tasks and so on.It facilitates researchers to investigate the influence of different task types on thelexical acquisition. Consequently, it can be applied to find out the better task types toenhance the lexical acquisition. This, to some extent, coincides with Swain’s (1985,1995) comprehensible output hypothesis, which claims that through language outputthe accuracy and fluency of learners’ language can be reinforced. Those tasks can beregarded as the embodiment of the comprehensible output.
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2.2 Formulaic Sequences and the Lexical Approach
English is a language peppered with multitudinous formulaic sequences and theymake up a large proportion of any discourse. Erman and Warren (2000) stated thatformulaic sequences occur in 58.6% of the English spoken discourses that theyanalyzed and 52.3% of the English written discourse. People, to a large extent, tend touse formulaic sequences to effect communications (Fang, 2013).Wray (2000) argued that the mastery of idiomatic forms of expression, includingidioms, collocations, and sentence frames is one significant indicator of successfullanguage learning. In other words, in the process of language learning, languagelearners are suggested to become sensitive to native speaker