A Comparative Study Of The Lexical Bundles In The Reading Sections Of The New And Old FLTRP Versions Of Senior High School English Textbooks

Lexical bundles are combinations of vocabulary sequences that recur in multiple words in the same register.As the basic language unit of English learning,lexical bundles have a fixed structure,and different lexical bundles’ structures have different textual and pragmatic functions.Lexical bundles can be used for overall storage and processing,which plays an important role in the rapid input and smooth output of the language.Textbooks contain rich contextual reading texts and a large number of lexical bundles,which is an important source of language input.Through exposure to contextual language,especially through reading,English learners can acquire most lexical bundles.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the characteristics of lexical bundles in the reading part of textbooks.This research was carried out from two aspects: the internal characteristics and external application of the textbooks,which conducted a Corpus-based comparative analysis and teacher interviews.Take the new and the old FLTRP versions of senior high school English textbooks’ lexical bundles as the research objects.It explored the lexical bundles’ structure and functional characteristics of the reading part of the new and the old FLTRP versions of senior high school English textbooks,and the lexical awareness of teachers when interpreting the textbooks.This research aimed to address these following questions:(1)What is the overall distribution of lexical bundles in the new and the old FLTRP versions of high school English textbooks?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the two versions of high school English textbooks in terms of the structure and function of lexical bundles?(3)When interpreting textbooks,what is the English teachers’ awareness of lexical bundles?In order to answer these questions,this research adopted Corpus-based method and interview.The author established two small text corpora,used Ant Conc 3.5.9 to extract qualified 3-6 lexical bundles,and used the Biber’s lexical bundles structure and function framework to explore the overall distribution,structure and function of the lexical bundles in the two versions of textbooks.On the basis of analyzing the first two research questions,an external application research was carried out through the interview to examine the English teachers’ awareness of lexical bundles when interpreting textbooks.The research results are as follows:(1)From the overall distribution of these textbooks,the lexical bundles in the two versions of textbooks doesn’t cover all the subtypes in structure and function,but the lexical bundles are similarities in type and differences in frequency;(2)In terms of structure,the lexical bundles in the two versions of textbooks mostly are phrase bundles,nouns and prepositional bundles.The first and second personal pronouns plus independent clauses lexical bundles are missing.The lexical bundles structure types in the new FLTRP high school English textbooks which appear more frequently.The substructure types covered by each type of lexical bundles in different textbooks are different;In terms of function,referent bundles dominate in two versions of textbooks,special conversational function and some functional subtypes are missing.The three lexical bundles functional types appear more frequently in the new FLTRP high school English textbooks,and the lexical bundles of the Stance Expression function only appear in the new FLTRP high school English textbooks;the structure and function of the lexical bundles are closely related,and the two versions of textbooks shows a high degree of similarity in the relationship between structure and function of the lexical bundles(3)English teachers have a certain awareness of lexical bundles when interpreting textbooks,however,due to course progress and limited classroom time,teachers’ awareness of lexical bundles is not obvious in the actual teaching process.This research explored from the two dimensions of the internal characteristics and the external application of the textbooks.First of all,it verified the Biber’s lexical bundles theory to a certain extent.A comparative study of the lexical bundles of the new and old FLTRP versions of senior high English textbooks could enrich the lexical bundles of the textbooks,which also could help teachers and students make better use of textbooks.Secondly,this research effectively helped teachers to accurately master the characteristics of lexical bundles in textbooks and improve teachers’ awareness of lexical bundles,which effectively assisted students to master the structure and function of lexical bundles and improve students’ learning efficiency.