Lexical bundles in academic texts by non-native speakers

Vol.38,No.2(2012)

Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2012-2-3

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/126942

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Abstract
Recent research (e.g. Biber et al. 1999, Wray 2000, Biber 2006, 2007, Cortes 2002, 2004, Hyland 2008, Simpson-Vlach and Ellis 2010) has evidenced the importance of lexical bundles – recurrent sequences of words – as a major component in coherent linguistic production and an essential aspect of the shared knowledge of a professional discourse community. While most investigations of lexical bundles in academic discourse have focused on their identification, structure, discourse functions and discipline variation, significantly less attention has been paid to the problems non-native speakers experience in acquiring genre- and discipline-specific recurrent expressions. The present study is concerned with the use of lexical bundles in non-native speaker academic discourse. The investigation is carried out on a corpus of diploma theses written by Czech students of English with the aim of finding out to what extent the authors of diploma theses use the different functional types of lexical bundles typical of expert academic discourse. While addressing the issues of accuracy, first language interference and the role of different functional types of bundles in coherent discourse production, the author also considers some approaches to teaching genre- and discipline-specific lexical bundles.

Keywords:
lexical bundles; discourse functions of lexical bundles; academic discourse; NNS academic writing; diploma theses; L1 interference; accuracy; disciplinary variation

Pages:
37–58
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