A Study On The Use Of Lexical Bundles In English Scientiifc Research Articles Written By Chinese Scholars

Recently, formulaic language has been receiving increasing attention in language research dueto its important role in the production of fluent and native-like language in spoken and writtengenres. This study investigates the use of a special type of formulaic language, lexical bundles,defined as “a sequence of three or more words that co-occur frequently in a particularregister”(Biber et al.990), in the published scientific research articles written in English byChinese scholars. For the purpose of the study, a corpus of published scientific researcharticles by Chinese scholars in four different disciplines is collected and a correspondingcorpus by native-speaker scholars is also collected for reference. This study makes analysis onthe distribution, structural and functional classification of lexical bundles extracted by thehelp of computer program in Chinese scholar’s corpus and each analysis is compared withnative-speaker scholar’s corpus in order to reveal the potential problems in the Chinesescholars’ use of lexical bundles. Results show that the distribution of3-6word bundles inChinese scholar writings is consistent with that of native scholar writings. Structural analysisof4-word bundles indicates that the Chinese scholars are more inclined to use VP-basedbundles while native speaker scholars prefer NP-based bundles. As for the functions of the4-word bundle, the two group of writers use a similar proportion of text-oriented bundles,however, the Chinese writers use more participant-oriented bundles and less research-orientedbundles than native writers of English. The findings also suggest that there is a strongrelationship between structure and function of lexical bundles. These findings are beneficialfor Chinese scholars to produce native-like scientific research articles and will promote theteaching for scientific English.