“I think it is”: Lexical Bundles in EFL writing

초록

This study analyzes a corpus of EFL writing to identify four-word lexical bundles used by university students. The study includes structural analyses of four-word bundles identified in the corpus of EFL writing and an analysis of the functions performed by these bundles with the examples of their use in context. To investigate four-word lexical bundles used by EFL students, a corpus of academic writing was complied from the essays of students attending Korea University. The corpus consisted of 96 essays written by 61 students. The essays have an average length of 300 words with the shortest essay being 109 words long and longest being 608 words long, totaling about 28,400 words. The findings of this study indicate that the overall extent of the use of lexical bundles is notably limited in EFL writing. Nonetheless, the lexical bundles produced by EFL students in the C/C essays are structurally similar to those used in academic prose by Biber et al. (1999). Regarding function, EFL students used lexical bundles to convey functions similar to those identified in previous studies of academic prose. In addition, the writing topics influence EFL students' use of certain bundles. One way to help EFL students become proficient in the use of lexical bundles could be to encourage them to notice the use of such bundles, becoming conscious of the different contexts and typical discourse functions they perform in academic writing.

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