Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing

By Yu-Hua Chen, Paul Baker. Language Learning & Technology, 2010

511 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44ca0f68127c4f98b4b12aa77540bbf73725c7f1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Literature and Literary Theory

Citations in the corpus

Linguistic features in writing quality and development: An overview (2020, background): “It should be noted that L2 writers rely on a smaller number of phrases, do not produce as many native-like sequences as L1 writers (Chen & Baker, 2010; Durrant & Schmitt, 2009), and overuse phrases common in L1 speech while underusing academically appropriate n-grams (Chen & Baker, 2010;…”
The Routledge Handbook of English for Academic Purposes (2016, background): “In connecting her EAP classroom to the wider political and social world her students lived in, she discussed issues such as anorexia and domestic violence in her psychology preparation class.”