Use of formulaic bundles by non-native English graduate writers and published authors in applied linguistics

Abstract

This corpus-based cross-sectional study examines how advanced non-native English graduate students of applied linguistics at different levels of study used target formulaic bundles in their academic papers. First, five-unit formulaic bundles were extracted from a one-million-word reference corpus composed of 128 published articles in applied linguistics. Then the use of these target bundles was examined in 136 academic papers written by 20 non-native English graduate students of applied linguistics at four levels of study and 15 published articles by English-speaking expert writers in the same field. It was found that, as the level of study increased, students used a greater number and variety of target bundles. Specifically, non-native graduate students at the higher levels of study used more bundles characteristic of academic writing (e.g., noun phrases with post-modifier fragments or certain prepositional phrases ) than those at the lower levels. Furthermore, the former group used more bundles as text organizers (e.g., explanation , exemplification , and focus ) and stance bundles than the latter group. The pedagogical implications are suggested regarding what and how to teach non-native English graduate writers regarding the use of formulaic bundles.