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Advances in Corpus-based Research on Academic Writing: Effects of discipline, register, and writer expertise
Edited by Ute Römer, Viviana Cortes and Eric Friginal
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 95] 2020
► pp. 115–134

Students’ use of lexical bundles

Exploring the discipline and writing experience interface

| Georgia State University
| Georgia State University

This chapter presents the results of an investigation into the interaction between discipline and writing experience on lexical bundle (LB) production. The study compared the production of 4-word LBs by novice and expert writers in medical and non-medical fields. The findings indicated that a combination of both writing experience and field-specific knowledge led to an increased use of medical LBs. Field-specific knowledge and experience seemed to be a prerequisite for the production of medical LBs with interactions demonstrating that the use of lexical bundles increased with the combination of field-specific knowledge and experience. The chapter interprets these findings based on previous research of learners’ acquisition of LBs and discusses their implications for both research and pedagogy.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Lexical bundles
    • 2.2Lexical bundles in academic discourse
    • 2.3Students’ use of lexical bundles
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Lexical bundles in medical research articles
    • 3.2Corpora
      • 3.2.1The MRA corpus (expert medical writing)
      • 3.2.2The MSRP corpus (medical student writing)
      • 3.2.3The OSP corpus (non-medical student writing)
      • 3.2.4The ORA corpus (non-medical expert corpus)
    • 3.3Data collection
      • 3.3.1Lexical bundle lists
      • 3.3.2Assessment of frequency of bundles
      • 3.3.3Statistical analysis
      • 3.3.4Analysis of bundle use in MSRPs
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Use of all bundles
    • 4.2Use of research-oriented bundles
    • 4.3Use of text-oriented bundles
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 20 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.95.05mbo
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