Lexical Bundles In English Academic Discourse By L1-chinese Writers

As a key component of fluent linguistic production,multi-word sequences referred to as lexical bundles are considered an essential distinguishing feature of discourse of different registers,genres,and disciplines.However,previous research shows that these strings present challenges to non-native English writers,especially novice writers such as MA and Ph.D.students struggling to make their academic texts fluent and assured to the readers in their communities.Drawing on a corpus of research articles,master’s theses,and doctoral dissertations in the field of Applied Linguistics with approximately 2.7 million words,the present study aims to investigate 4-word lexical bundles in English academic texts by L1-Chinese writers as compared to those in parallel texts by native English writers,exploring the impact of cultural backgrounds and proficiency levels upon L2 English discourses.The results show that Chinese academic writers,especially MA students,use a more significant number of and less variety of lexical bundles than native English writers and have clung to a different group of bundles with significantly higher frequencies,which may be attributed to the divergent core orientations of Chinese and Western cultures.Structurally,the native group is characterized by phrasal constructions,whereas clausal constructions feature the Chinese group with higher occurrences of clause-related bundles.Functionally,Chinese writers,compared to the native groups,utilize more text-oriented bundles but far fewer research-oriented bundles.As a result,bundles distributions in the Chinese research articles are much closer to those in articles by their native counterparts.However,their use shows deviations from native academic norms,indicating that,while Chinese experts are professional writers,their formulaic language is hybrid,essentially,but not entirely,native-like.The study also reveals that Chinese postgraduates,particularly MA students,frequently use the lexical and grammatical features typical of speech,pointing to their weak awareness of genres and the importance of the particular function.Chinese novice writers overuse some‘safe’ lexical bundles,especially fixed collocations that they are familiar with and proficient in using,demonstrating their restricted lexical repertoire,particularly for professional academic writing.Specifically,Chinese writers with higher language proficiency utilize more lexical bundles typical of written academic English(e.g.,NPs embedding relative clauses)than those at lower levels,which points to the distinct syntactic characteristics of the Chinese language and English language.That research articles contain a relatively higher number of these constructions than master’s theses and doctoral dissertations could be attributed to professional writers’ stronger awareness of academic genres.The findings also demonstrate that mastery of lexical bundles is an incremental acquisition,a process of understanding enhancing,with bundles used inappropriately,relatively appropriately,and later native-like and academic-like appropriateness.Furthermore,Chinese writers tend to use fewer but more diverse bundles in academic writing as they gain proficiency in linguistic and writing levels of the second language.An increasing pattern of phrasal features is discovered in texts from postgraduate writers to expert writers.Noticeably,the quantity of overused and underused bundles decreases in the doctoral dissertations by Chinese writers compared with that of master’s theses,and the usages tend to be less colloquial and verbose,which indicates that the use of bundles in their writings comes close to the professional writers.Significant implications are discussed in terms of how the study results could be used to raise the genre awareness of L2 writers in academic discourse to help them learn the importance of culture in second language acquisition and equip the EAP writing classroom with more resources.Finally,the limitations and further recommendations for the research are discussed.