Abstract
The utilization of English recurrent word combinations –lexical bundles- play a fundamental role in academic prose (Karabacak & Qin, 2013). There has been highly limited research about comparing Turkish non-native and native English writers’ use of lexical bundles in academic prose in terms of frequency, structure and functions of lexical bundles (Bal, 2010; Karabacak & Qin, 2013, Öztürk, 2014). Therefore, this current research was conducted in order to investigate the most frequently used lexical bundles in the academically published articles of Turkish non-native and native speakers of English and to investigate whether there was a significant difference between native and non-native scholars with respect to the frequency, structures and functions of English language lexical bundles. The data were collected from two corpora; 15 scientific articles of native speakers and 15 scientific articles of Turkish advanced writers. The investigation included a quantitative analysis of the use of three-word lexical bundles and a qualitative analysis of the functions and structures they serve. To be more conservative, three-word lexical bundles which occur 40 times per million words and appear in 5 different texts were described a lexical bundle in this current research. The findings revealed that Turkish non-native writers showed underuse and less variation in the use of lexical bundles in their academic prose compared to native speakers.
Highlights
According to the findings by corpus-based studies, it has been widely agreed that lexical bundles are necessary building blocks for written discourse (Biber & Conrad, 1999; Cortes, 2006; Hyland, 2008a; Li & Schmitt, 2009)
The data were collected from two corpora; 15 scientific articles of native speakers and 15 scientific articles of Turkish advanced writers
The investigation included a quantitative analysis of the use of three-word lexical bundles and a qualitative analysis of the functions and structures they serve
Summary
According to the findings by corpus-based studies, it has been widely agreed that lexical bundles are necessary building blocks for written discourse (Biber & Conrad, 1999; Cortes, 2006; Hyland, 2008a; Li & Schmitt, 2009). The frequent use of lexical bundles in academic writing signifies competent language user in writing, the absence of these bundles reflects the signal of novice writers (Haswell, 1991; Cortes, 2004; Hyland, 2008a; Chen & Baker, 2010). In this aspect, Cortes (2004) argues that a certain usage of lexical bundles is an indication of a competent language user. Ellis, Simpson-Vlach and Maynard (2008) state that frequently used lexical bundles results in a natural language
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