Comparative Study Of Four-word Lexical Bundle Usage In English Linguistics PhD Dissertations By Chinese And Native Writers

Mastering the knowledge of lexical bundles not only improves the accuracy,authenticity and fluency of language expressions,but also plays a key role in the construction of academic discourse.For advanced learners of English,academic writing is a component of academic research and its quality has a direct impact on their academic achievement.As an important factor affecting the level of academic writing,the proficiency of lexical bundles remains a great challenge for advanced learners of English.Academic lexical bundles have been the subject of an increasing number of studies in recent years,particularly focusing on the different genres,different disciplines and lexical bundle usage in writers of various English language proficiency levels.At present,most studies on lexical bundle usage of Chinese English learners have concentrated on undergraduate and graduate students,with very few studies on PhD students.Furthermore,doctoral dissertation writing requires PhD students’ incredible ability to conduct independent scientific research.Therefore,the doctoral dissertation provides greater academic value than the bachelor’s and master’s theses and is crucial in advancing the frontier of the discipline.As a result,based on two Chinese and native linguistics doctoral comparative corpora created by the researcher,this study employs a combination of the software Ant Conc 3.5.9 and manual selecting to compare the characteristics of the usage of four-word lexical bundles in English linguistics dissertations written by Chinese and native writers.Besides,this research compares the high-frequency lexical bundles in two corpora and analyzes the target bundles in terms of structure and function according to Biber’s structural classification and Hyland’s functional classification,as well as examines the correlation between structural and functional categories of bundles,and finally concludes the characteristics of lexical bundle use in Chinese advanced English learners’ writing.This study addresses four research questions:(1)What are the high-frequency lexical bundles in Chinese PhD students’ and native PhD students’ English dissertations?(2)What are the similarities and differences of lexical bundle structure in Chinese PhD students’ and native PhD students’ English dissertations?(3)What are the similarities and differences of lexical bundle function in Chinese PhD students’ and native PhD students’ English dissertations?(4)What is the correlation between structural and functional categories of lexical bundles?The study demonstrates that Chinese PhD students utilize more tokens and types of lexical bundles than native PhD students in academic discourse.By comparing top20 high-frequency lexical bundles from both databases,noun lexical bundles and preposition lexical bundles are discovered to be the majority.Compared to native PhD students,Chinese PhD students tend to overuse some high-frequency lexical bundles.Structurally,phrasal bundles make up the majority in two corpora,while the distribution of lexical bundles varies.Preposition bundles comprise the largest portion in Chinese doctoral corpus,whereas noun bundles constitute the biggest portion in native doctoral corpus.Compared to native PhD students,Chinese PhD students employ fewer noun bundles and other forms but more preposition bundles and verb bundles.As for the specific employment of bundles,native PhD students employ more “Noun phrase with of-phrase fragment” and “It+verb/adjective phrase fragment” structures,whereas Chinese PhD students utilize more “Preposition phrase with of-phrase fragment” and “(Verb/Adjective+)to-clause fragment”structures.The occurrence of the “Active verb with prepositional phrase fragment”structure in Chinese doctoral dissertations indicates the oral style characteristics in Chinese academic writing.Functionally,the research-oriented and text-oriented lexical bundles dominate in both corpora,but their distribution differs.In Chinese doctoral corpus,research-oriented bundles constitute the biggest proportion,whereas text-oriented bundles have the greatest proportion in native doctoral corpus.Chinese PhD students use more research-oriented bundles but fewer text-oriented and participant-oriented bundles than native PhD students.Chinese PhD students,in particular,utilize more“Description” bundles and “Topic” bundles to describe research.Chinese PhD students,on the other hand,employ fewer “Framing signals” and “Engagement features” bundles for text-oriented and participant-oriented bundles.In terms of the correlation between structural and functional categories,Chinese and native PhD students employ various structural lexical bundles to achieve similar discourse functions.Native PhD students use more noun lexical bundles to describe their research and more preposition bundles to construct discourse.Chinese PhD students,however,have a propensity to describe their research and create discourse by using verb bundles,particularly passive verb.It shows that there is still a disparity between Chinese and native PhD students in the accuracy and diversity of lexical bundle employment to achieve discourse functions.This study applies the study of lexical bundles to the realm of academic discourse,with the goal of enriching research findings on the use of lexical bundles in academic writing and giving topics for the study of lexical bundles.This study also provides useful guidance and reference for the teaching of second language academic writing.