ANH DINH (VINH UNIVERSITY)

LEXICAL BUNDLES IN OPINION ESSAYS BY JAPANESE LEARNERS AND L1 ENGLISH SPEAKERS : LINGUISTICS, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, AND RELATED AREAS

Lexical bundles are essential components of discourse, serving as markers of fluency and appropriateness in register-specific language use. This study, following a corpus-driven approach, investigates the use of lexical bundles in English opinion essays by Japanese university students compared to L1 English speakers. The dataset includes 456 essays from Japanese students and 400 essays from L1 English users, all sourced from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English. Utilizing the corpus tool AntConc, four-word lexical bundles were automatically retrieved based on predefined criteria. These bundles were then categorized using Biber's framework (Biber et al., 1999; Biber et al., 2004, 2007) and analyzed for frequency, grammatical structure, and discourse function. Findings indicate that both groups' writing exhibited characteristics more akin to spoken language than formal academic prose, with this tendency being particularly pronounced in the writing of Japanese students. The learner group showed a higher reliance on four-word lexical bundles compared to their L1 English counterparts. Many common bundles were found in both groups, likely due to the similar argumentative nature of the essay topics. Although both groups frequently used verb phrases and stance bundles, L1 English speakers demonstrated greater diversity in their usage, as revealed by concordance analysis. These structural and functional analyses of lexical bundles shed light on the nuances of their writing styles and offer insights for pedagogical purposes.

Dinh Thi Mai Anh is a lecturer at Foreign Languages Department, Vinh University in Vietnam. She holds a Master’s Degree in English Language Teaching from Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, vocabulary and academic writing.