| Formulaic language is of significance to both first language and second language learning in terms of fluency and accuracy.As corpus linguistics has sprung up in the past decades,research on lexical bundles in EAP(English for Academic Purposes)writing has gained particular attention by linguists and language scholars during the prosperous exploitation of formulaic language.The previous studies mainly demonstrated the features of lexical bundles employed by different groups of scholars in their writing works through a comparative approach.These comparisons of the use of lexical bundles were mainly between:(1)native students and nonnative students;(2)English learners at different levels;(3)native researchers and nonnative researchers;(4)people in different disciplines.The writing genres included students writing assignments,intact published articles,and part of an intact article,such as introduction,conclusion,abstract and so on.Besides,research disciplines were limited to history,biology,business,applied linguistics,mechanics,chemistry,medical science,etc.These studies provided insights into the writing of academic articles from different perspectives.However,most of them have only proved that the differences exist indeed,but the results were not specific to shed light on wording and phrasing in one academic context,especially in a given discipline.A few of them have conducted thorough research on the use of lexical bundles in disciplines but only limited in foreign studies(for example,Cortes 2002).Moreover,for Chinese scholars,to publish an article whether in Chinese or international journals means a tenable and appropriate English abstract is indispensable.Therefore,studies concentrating on merely one discipline and on abstract genre to explore the features of lexical bundles displayed by international and domestic authors respectively are expected to benefit Chinese authors’ abstract writing competence.The present study focuses on materials science and engineering discipline in order to find the differences of lexical bundles employed by international authors and Chinese authors in this field with the aid of corpus-driven approach.Two corpora,International Materials Science and Engineering Abstracts Corpus(IMSEAC)and Chinese Material Science and Engineering Abstracts Corpus(CMSEAC)were self-established.To identify lexical bundles in the two corpora,supported by Ant Conc 3.5.2,a cut-off frequency was set as five times in each corpus(about 53 times per million words for IMSEAC and 56 times per million words for CMSEAC if converted)with previous studies for reference,and the range was set as in at least five different texts.3-,4-,and 5-word lexical bundles employed by both groups of authors were listed,and in particular 4-word lexical bundles were categorized within a structural framework adapted from Biber et al.’s(1999)and the functional framework established by Simpson-Vlach & Ellis(2010).Finally,ten top-ranked lexical bundles in each corpus were listed and compared from qualitative perspectives including frequency-range ratio,verb tense and noun-based phrases recurrent rate.The findings can be summarized as follows:(1)Chinese authors predominantly relied more on lexical bundles than international authors in abstracts writing and a number of 4-word and 5-word lexical bundles were found in addition to 3-word ones,while international authors were more likely to employ shorter word combinations,namely 3-word lexical bundles,and fewer longer sequences were found in their abstract writings.The chi-square result of types and tokens show that Chinese authors had an overuse problem in using some certain lexical bundles.(2)The overall structural distribution of lexical bundles used in abstracts by international and Chinese authors demonstrates a roughly consistent result.This may be attributed to the writing style in this field being descriptive and experiments-based.However,the two groups showed preference for different structures of lexical bundles.(Noun phrase/pronoun+)active verb(+complement)and prepositional phrase + of are two structures commonly used by international authors,whereas noun phrase+ of fragment and prepositional phrase + of take up a large proportion in Chinese authors’ writings.Besides,passive + prepositional phrase and other noun phrases also have a remarkable performance in the writings of Chinese authors.(3)Though both of the groups employed referential expressions most,discourse organizers next and stance expressions least,Chinese authors used far more referential expressions(78.9%)but smaller proportions of discourse organizers(14.4%)and stance expressions(6.7%)than international authors(50%,38.5%,and 11.5%).Especially,Chinese authors used a bunch of sequences with identification and focus function under the referential expressions category.(4)Through comparison of range-frequency ratio of the ten top-ranked lexical bundles in the two corpora,Chinese authors are exposed to have an overuse tendency on high-frequency lexical bundles.Tense divergence of some bundles in results move may show that Chinese authors were unacquainted with the pragmatic meaning of tense in this move.Last but not least,terms as lexical bundles were found in Chinese authors’ abstract writings,which outlined the brunches of materials science and engineering that domestic research has focused on.The study offers implications for Chinese researchers in materials science and engineering discipline to write English abstracts,with guidance and reality. |
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