Abstract：Abstract: The present study utilized two experiments “visual online grammaticality judgment task” and “auditory online grammaticality judgment task” on E-Prime program, to explore the automaticity developmental patterns of English high frequency formulas of 196 Chinese learners majoring in English. The results showed: (1) Visual automaticity developed slowly. There was no significant improvement after first two-year English major instruction while there was significant improvement after four-year instruction and the Reaction Time was near that of the natives. (2) Auditory automaticity developed fast in the first two-year English major instruction with a speed 3 times as that of the visual automaticity at the same period；however， it decreased in the 3rd and 4th years. The study offers empirical evidences for exploring the possibilities of setting up second language automaticity as a teaching objective and auditory-related courses in the 3rd and 4th years.
