Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 English thesis abstracts: a corpus-driven move approach

As a key component of fluent linguistic production, multi-word sequences called lexical bundles are considered an important distinguishing feature of discourse in different registers, genres, and disciplines. They are also an important aspect of empirically correct and proficient language use in a corpus of natural language because they enable writers to establish membership in a specific discourse community. Given the significant role of lexical bundles in academic writing, the comparison of master’s theses, written by L1 English and L2 English master’s students, offers significant insight into the ways in which lexical bundles are utilized, both structurally and functionally. Based on the assumption, we built a 1,282,700-word English corpus of master’s theses to compare the convergent and divergent usage of four-word lexical bundles in the academic texts of L1 English and L1 Chinese of L2-English writers. Findings showed that Chinese students use lexical bundles more frequently but with less variety than L1 English writers. Shared bundles, which exhibit a grammatically compressed discourse style dominated by prepositional phrases, were used by the two groups of writers in different ways and with significantly different frequencies. The analysis of divergent bundles revealed that Chinese writers frequently use clausal bundles while L1 English students employ more phrasal bundles. With regard to students’ ability to write convincingly in various functional categories, the two groups exhibited remarkable differences. Chinese writers also demonstrated some uniqueness of lexical bundles usage and weak awareness of register in the academic writing. The pedagogical implications and further areas of the study are discussed.

With the widespread use of English as the lingua franca of academia, there is a growing need of research into how non-native speakers striving to be socialized in target academic discourse communities deal with variation in meaning and organization of academic texts across fi elds, languages and cultures. An important indicator of competent linguistic production is the mastering of the register- and genre-specifi c formulaic expressions termed lexical bundles, which are defi ned as sequences of three or more words with frequent co-occurrence in a particular context (Biber et al. 1999). While recent studies have addressed disciplinary and novice-expert differences in the use of lexical bundles, cross-cultural variation in bundle use remains underexplored. This paper investigates lexical bundles indicating authorial presence in a specialized corpus of Master’s degree theses from the fi elds of linguistics and methodology written by German and Czech university students. The aim of the study is to compare how novice Czech and German authors use lexical bundles indicating authorial presence, to consider whether and to what extent the novice writers have adapted their writing style to the conventions of Anglo- American academic writing, and to discuss the role of the L1 academic literacy tradition and instructions received in writing courses for the modelling of novice writers’ academic discourse. The analysis shows that the variety and frequency of interpersonal bundles in Czech and German novice writers’ discourse do not approximate to the standard of published academic texts in English. The fi ndings also indicate that while the considerable similarities in the way Czech and German novice writers use the target structures for constructing authorial presence refl ect their common roots in the Central European tradition of academic discourse, the divergences may be attributed to a difference in the degree of adaptation to Anglo-American writing conventions.

Specificity and generality of lexical bundles in the rhetorical moves of Applied Linguistics research article introductions

Lexical bundles, as a recurrent sequence of words, are an important component of both spoken and written academic corpora, used both by professional academics and student writers in order to contribute to better structural organization, efficient communication, and well-established credibility. These expressions are formulaic and highly frequent, with rather clear discourse function and communicative purpose. The most frequently used structures of lexical bundles include NP-based, VP-based, and clause-based bundles. The aim of the paper is to explore the lexical bundles on a learner corpus of 448 abstracts written by non-native English speakers in English during their Masters studies. Structural analysis is performed in order to observe which structures students prefer and utilize while writing abstracts. The corpus was subdivided into two sub-corpora, depending on whether graduate students received any formal instruction on academic writing before publishing their abstracts, to explore whether instructions influence the use of lexical bundles with novice writers. The results offer the most common structures of lexical bundles that graduate students use, as well as the analysis of the types and diversity of lexical bundles used based on whether or not students had academic writing instructions.

Formulaic sequences are known for being measures of foreign language fluency for learners. Research in language processing suggests that native speakers as well as learners process these sequences as a single word (ELLIS, 1996). Nevertheless, little is known about the use of formulaic sequences in Portuguese and, even fewer studies have examined the use of formulaic sequences in learners of Portuguese. Therefore, in this study, we sought to investigate the textual function of lexical bundles extracted from a corpus of learners of Portuguese as a Second Language (PSL). Lexical bundles are sequences of three or more words that occur with larger than expected frequency in a specific corpus. In this study, we used corpus linguistics tools to extract lexical bundles that occur frequently at two levels of proficiency – beginner and intermediate – in Portuguese. These bundles were, then, classified according to their textual function. Results indicate that beginner level students use more bundles associated with concrete references, while intermediate learners use more bundles associated with textual organization and stance. This study contributes to the description of Portuguese acquisition at these two levels of proficiency. In addition, the results can foster classroom activities where the PSL teachers introduce new functions of lexical bundles to students. Finally, we hope that this study motivates more research describing the language used at different stages of Portuguese acquisition.

Background. Lexical Bundles (LBs) have become the focus of many recent corpus linguistics studies. Research has found variable use of LBs in terms of quality and quantity pertaining to different linguistic groups or registers. Still, there is a paucity of research investigating Arab EFL writers’ use and development of such a feature. Purpose. This study investigates the 4-word LBs use and development by Arab EFL learners and expert writers in a corpus of 250000 words regarding their frequency, functions, and structure. Methods. Two corpora were compiled for Arab learners and scholars. The LB use of both groups was compared to investigate the development of LB use. Further, the Arab corpus was analysed against a native reference corpus extracted from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus to compare LB use across the two corpora. Results and Implications. The results imply that there is no noticeable effect of postgraduate education or professional practice on using LBs. The other results, however, are in-line with the previous literature in that native speakers’ use of LBs varies in quantity and quality from non-natives’. The findings reveal that stance LBs are more frequent in the native corpus and that they tend to use more VP-based clausal LBs than their non-native counterparts. These findings offer empirical evidence that EFL writing quality is lower despite the current academic writing instruction they receive. They, therefore, indicate the need to foster academic writing instruction programs to include training on using LBs in learners’ writing at both Bachelor and postgraduate levels. Also, the results are expected to raise teachers’ awareness of how EFL learners use LBs to develop their writing quality and thus to adapt their teaching strategies accordingly. Moreover, Arab scholars are called to reconsider their use of effective writing techniques including LBs for more effective writing.

Using lexical bundles as a tool to analyze definite article use in L2 academic writing: An exploratory study

A geopolitics of academic writing: S. Canagarajah, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, 332pp., ISBN 0-8229-4187-2 paperback

Lexical bundle use and crosslinguistic influence in academic texts

<p>In the recent years, globalization prepared a ground for English to be the lingua franca of the academia. Thus, most highly prestigious international journals have defined their medium of publications as English. However, even advanced language learners have difficulties in writing their research articles due to the lack of appropriate lexical knowledge and discourse conventions of academia. Considering the fact that the underuse, overuse and misuse of formulaic sequences or lexical bundles are often characterized with non-native writers of English, lexical bundle studies have recently been on the top of the agenda of corpus studies. Although the related literature has represented specific genres or disciplines, no study has scrutinized lexical bundles in the research articles that are written in the educational sciences. Therefore, the current study compared the structural and functional characteristics of the lexical-bundle use in L1 and L2 research articles in English. The results revealed the deviation of the usages of lexical bundles by the non-native speakers of English from the native speaker norms. Furthermore, the results indicated the overuse of clausal or verb-phrase based lexical bundles in the research articles of Turkish scholars while their native counterparts used noun and prepositional phrase-based lexical bundles more than clausal bundles.</p>

Comparison of Lexical Bundles used by Turkish, Chinese, and American University Students

Lexical bundles (LBs) are indispensable building blocks and essential constituents of academic discourse. The appropriate utilization of the lexical bundle’s approach can effectively enhance students’ understanding of academic discourse. LBs in various academic genres have extensively been studied concerning written and spoken language. However, less research has been conducted to explore the occurrence, nature, and frequency of LBs in Pakistani academic discourse, especially in textbooks. Therefore, the present study aims to explore four-word common LBs and their functional taxonomies employed in Pakistani Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSSC) level textbooks of Chemistry and Physics. A specialized corpus of these textbooks was built which was run on Antconc software for the identification and extraction of the LBs in the corpus. The classification of the identified LBs was then carried out utilizing Biber functional taxonomies of LBs. The study found 102 LBs occurring in the selected textbooks. In functional categories, there was a dominant use of discourse organizers and referential expressions. The findings related to frequent strings of words which can have significant educational implications for teachers, language material developers, and syllabus designers. The list of LBs with discourse functions provided by this study can significantly be used to enhance students’ academic writing and their ability to comprehend different types of scientific texts.

Given the fundamental contribution of formulaic sequences to the fluent, natural second/foreign language (L2) use and processing, finding effective ways of improving learners’ formulaic language has increasingly engaged the attention of L2 practitioners. Focusing on lexical bundles (LBs), as the most frequent formulaic-language strings, the current quasi-experimental study examined statistical learning of recurring 3-to-6-word LBs among Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) receiving different types of distributional, narrative sensory stimuli. To this end, three intact classes received a recurring-theme narrative content in three different input modalities including only-auditory, audiovisual, and captioned audiovisual. To examine whether exposure to statistical, varied-modality input (or sensory stimuli) constituted profound knowledge of L2 lexical bundles, the three experimental groups’ performances on immediate and delayed posttests were compared with those of a control group which received no purposefully distributional, modality-based stimuli. ANOVA results revealed that all the frequency-based modality inputs led to more sizeable LB gains. Further, multiple (captioned) audiovisual sensory stimuli more effectively fostered retention and recalling of the target LBs over time than only-auditory input. The retention differences between the bimodal and multimodal inputs were insignificant. Overall, the findings supported combined statistical, formulaic advantages for processing, retention, and recalling of L2 LBs through distributional, multimodal stimuli.

Representation and processing of lexical bundles: Evidence from word monitoring

This study examined lexical bundles (LBs) used differently by Chinese and American PhD students of linguistics in their dissertation abstracts. Two corpora were built, with each having 700 dissertation abstracts produced by Chinese and American PhD students of linguistics, respectively. The study then used lexical analysis software to retrieve frequently used three-word LBs, from which LBs having different frequencies at a significant level across the two corpora were identified and termed as bundles used differently (BUDs). BUDs were then categorized and analyzed manually in terms of structure, function, and distribution in rhetorical moves. The major findings were: (1) 57.14% of the frequently used LBs were BUDs, of which 90.67% had occurrences in both corpora. The BUDs distributed inequivalently across categories and moves, with the text-oriented category and the move of Result having the most BUDs; and (2) BUDs exhibited two major patterns: the Chinese and American students filled different constituents into structurally and functionally similar constructions, and used LBs of dissimilar functions to fulfill the same communicative purposes. These findings indicate that variations in LB use have a high pedagogic value and confirm the need for using corpora to identify and teach core genre-specific vocabularies to second/foreign language learners.