Lexical Bundle Uses in Prospective EFL Science and Engineering University Students’ Writing

Abstract

Recently, many studies of corpus linguistics have explored corpora to investigate how lexical bundles are distributed in terms of their function and structure in diverse language uses. In this vein, while there has been much research of lexical bundles in university students’ L2/EFL writing, there is little research on prospective science and engineering university students. The purpose of the current study, therefore, is to investigate how prospective science and engineering university students use lexical bundles in academic writing. To this end, two corpora of argumentative writing were contributed both by university students with advanced English proficiency, and prospective science and engineering students. A systematic comparison of structural and functional lexical bundles found that there are significant differences in their uses of the lexical bundles. Specifically, the prospective science and engineering university students used more VP-based lexical bundles, a contributing characteristic of conversation register. Moreover, their functional use of lexical bundles was idiosyncratic, indicating that the prospective science and engineering students use less discourse-organizing lexical bundles and more conversation lexical bundles. The findings suggest that science and engineering students need special attention in the earlier stages of their university English education.