Lexical Bundles in Argumentative and Narrative Writings by Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that lexical bundles are important building blocks of discourse and a significant component of fluent linguistic production. However, little research was found to investigate lexical bundles in narrative writings, a basic text type on which the other text types (discourses) build upon. The present study tries to fill the gap and investigates lexical bundles in argumentative and narrative writings by Chinese EFL learners. The lexical bundles were retrieved by kfNgram and then manually refined and classified into structural and functional categories respectively based on Biber et al.’s (1999) and Biber et al.’s (2003) frameworks. The findings show that (1) students used much more four-word bundles in argumentative writings than those in narrative writings; (2) no big difference was found in the structural patterns of the four-word lexical bundles used by the students across the two text types; (3) students relied much more on stance bundles than the other functional types of bundles in their argumentative writings, while they turned to referential expressions other than stance bundles or discourse organizers in their narrative writings. The functional purposes of various discourses explain the students’ selection of different functional patterns across the text type.