The phrase "a formative year" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a year that significantly influences a person's development or character, often during childhood or adolescence.
Example: "Moving to a new city during my teenage years was a formative year that shaped my perspective on life."
Alternatives: "a pivotal year" or "a crucial year".
After a formative year with a sawdust bucket, "she didn't want to use a flush toilet," Ms. Muscarella said.
Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat Cohen's music is tied to a formative year I spent living in Montreal.
Tom Wood, the England flanker, spent a formative year at Oamaru in New Zealand, the birthplace of Richie McCaw, and Wood understands the sly moves which remain part and parcel of the game.
And he insists that as a devout Catholic who spent a formative year in his youth as a missionary in Central America, he will not concede the "values" issue to the Republicans.
He helped me see the importance of simply diving in and doing experiments". After earning his Ph.D. from Princeton, Lambert spent a formative year as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of biophysicist Edo Kussell at NYU.
Francesca Woodman was born in 1958, and grew up in Boulder, where her parents belonged to the fine art faculty at the University of Colorado, though she also spent a great deal of time in Italy, where the family has a house in Antella, near Florence (later, she would spend a formative year in Rome as a college student).
Nine appears to have been a very formative year for Brock.
The etiology of this underachievement is complex because numerous factors experienced during a child's formative years may have a detrimental effect upon development and functional efficiency.
His next project isn't fiction but a memoir about his formative years as a writer.
Former Manchester City and Germany player Uwe Rosler tells Football Focus that the secret police tried to recruit him as a spy during his formative years as a player in East Germany.
For a listener whose formative years were the 1940's and 50's, the link between Mompou's extended chords and those of bebop is natural.
