Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing

TLDR

The study uses an automated, frequency‑driven method to identify lexical bundles in academic writing. Bundles were extracted from a corpus of published academic texts and two student corpora (L1 and L2) and examined both quantitatively and qualitatively. Published academic texts displayed the broadest range of bundles, while L2 student writing showed the narrowest; some high‑frequency expressions common in published texts were underused by students, whereas L2 writers overused certain phrases rarely used by native academics, indicating pedagogical implications.

Abstract

Yu-Hua Chen and Paul Baker Lancaster University This paper adopts an automated frequency-driven approach to identify frequently-used word combinations (i.e., lexical bundles) in academic writing. Lexical bundles retrieved from one corpus of published academic texts and two corpora of student academic writing (one L1, the other L2), were investigated both quantitatively and qualitatively. Published academic writing was found to exhibit the widest range of lexical bundles whereas L2 student writing showed the smallest range. Furthermore, some high-frequency expressions in published texts, such as in the context of, were underused in both student corpora, while the L2 student writers overused certain expressions (e.g., all over the world) which native academics rarely used. The findings drawn from structural and functional analyses of lexical bundles also have some pedagogical implications.