Resumen

Introduction
One line of enquiry of our research project is advanced Argentinian EFL students’ use of formulaic sequences. In this paper we analyse typical sequences learners resort to in their essays and characterise their use as compared to the one found in native corpora like the BNC and Davies’ (2008) Corpus of American Contemporary English (COCA Academic Sub-corpus). First, the theoretical framework is presented. The study is then described in terms of its objectives, the corpus characteristics and its analysis and the sequences selected. The findings are detailed around the different sequences involving the three nouns (EFFECT, IMPACT and INFLUENCE) which lexically signal the effect in a reason-result semantic relation. Learner use is explored and characterised through concordance lines obtained from the learner corpus. On the basis of these results some pedagogical inferences are drawn that may contribute to the development of advanced learners’ formulaic competence.