A Comparative Analysis of Four-word Lexical Bundles Used by Postgraduate Students in China and America

Abstract

The ability to write is widely acknowledged as a crucial skill in higher education. As a key component of fluent linguistic production, lexical bundles (LBs) are an important distinguishing feature in academic writing. However, many postgraduate students face challenges using lexical bundles in academic writing. This study focuses on the similarities and differences of various forms, structural, and functional patterns of four-word lexical bundle usage between Chinese postgraduate EFL learners and American native postgraduate students in Applied Linguistics. It adopts a corpus-based methodology based on two self-built learner corpora and uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse the data. The results showed that Chinese postgraduate EFL learners rely more on four-word LBs in constructing academic writing. In terms of structural types, Chinese postgraduate EFL learners tend to have a balance when using the three different types of bundles. In contrast, native American postgraduate students tend to use more prepositional-based bundles. As for the functional types, Chinese postgraduate EFL learners are more inclined to use research-oriented texts to provide descriptions to organise the writer’s actions, whilst native American postgraduate students are more inclined to use text-oriented bundles to organise the text. The findings also offer implications for improving teaching lexical bundles in academic writing curricula in China.