A Study Of The Use Of Lexical Bundles In Intermediate EFL Learners’ Writing

As reviewed in the literature,lexical bundles,also known as prefabricated chunks or formulaic sequences,are important components of linguistic production and EFL writing.To improve the performance of EFL learners’ writing,a growing body of research has been conducted,and the results suggest that lexical approach plays a significant role in language production.However,there is little research exploring the use of lexical bundles in senior high school students’ writing from the perspective of learners themselves.Based on Nattinger & DeCarrico’s lexical theory and Biber’s lexical theory,this study is to explore the use of lexical bundles by senior high school EFL learners,aiming at elaborating the difference in the frequency and functions of lexical bundles across different proficiency levels by contrastive analysis.A corpora is set up by thirty English compositions,seventy-one questionnaires and two in-depth interviews,and thus quantitative method and textual analysis method are adopted.The results show that senior high school students are aware of using lexical bundles,but students in different proficiency levels differ greatly in frequency and functions.Firstly,high-score group students use more lexical bundles not only in number but also in type,which echoes the literature.Secondly,phrasal constraints are employed most in proportion by two groups,next in line are sentence builders and poly words,and the least are institutionalized expressions.Thirdly,there also exists difference in the use of stance expressions and discourse organizers between two groups.High-score group not only use more discourse organizers in number than that of low-score group,but also in type.The study may enrich and deepen the studies on lexical bundles in EFL learning and teaching,and yield insights and implications for the future research.