Semantic Properties of Lexical Bundles Used by Young Adult Korean EFL Students at Different Grade Levels

Abstract

This study explores the potential of lexical bundles (LBs) as a way for investigating academic writing development of EFL students. This study used a corpus of essays by Korean EFL students in high school or the first week of college divided by school-level group into three subcorpora (first-year high school; second-year high school; and third-year high school/incoming college). It investigated how groups used LBs in context by examining these LBs’ semantic prosodies and preferences. Findings showed marked differences in structures and functions of bundles favored by first-year high school students versus two higher school-level groups, with the former using more bundles characteristic of colloquial spoken language. On the other hand, a contextual analysis of LBs shared across subcorpora showed more similarities between the first-year group and the second-year group regarding semantic prosodies and preferences. These two adjacent groups tended to project positive, neutral, and negative affective meanings via LBs at similar rates that differed from rates of the third-year/incoming college group. These results shed light on learners’ developmental trajectory toward being proficient academic writers in terms of their use of formulaic multiword sequences in academic prose.