{"title":"Sentence initial lexical bundles in Chinese and New Zealand PhD theses in the discipline of General and Applied Linguistics","authors":"Liang-qi Li, M. Franken, Shaoqun Wu","doi":"10.1075/aral.21018.li","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Lexical bundles are recurrent multiword combinations and often function as discourse building blocks. Lexical bundles have been analysed in university students’ writing to detect linguistic errors, measure writing competence, and investigate the divergence between L1 and L2 writing. Few studies, however, have focused on the high-stakes genre of PhD thesis and investigated the bundle productions of the same genre within the same level and discipline. This paper compares sentence initial lexical bundles in the corpora of English theses written by Chinese and New Zealand PhD students in the discipline of General and Applied Linguistics. Forty-six bundles from a Chinese corpus and forty-two bundles from a New Zealand corpus were generated. Among them, 94% of sentence initial bundles were identified as metadiscursive bundles. Chinese and New Zealand doctoral students showed considerably different preferences in their bundle selection. The paper examines the possible impact of these preferences and suggests there is a need to extend the metadiscourse knowledge of doctoral students in terms of lexical bundles.","PeriodicalId":43911,"journal":{"name":"Australian Review of Applied Linguistics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Australian Review of Applied Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21018.li","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Lexical bundles are recurrent multiword combinations and often function as discourse building blocks. Lexical bundles have been analysed in university students’ writing to detect linguistic errors, measure writing competence, and investigate the divergence between L1 and L2 writing. Few studies, however, have focused on the high-stakes genre of PhD thesis and investigated the bundle productions of the same genre within the same level and discipline. This paper compares sentence initial lexical bundles in the corpora of English theses written by Chinese and New Zealand PhD students in the discipline of General and Applied Linguistics. Forty-six bundles from a Chinese corpus and forty-two bundles from a New Zealand corpus were generated. Among them, 94% of sentence initial bundles were identified as metadiscursive bundles. Chinese and New Zealand doctoral students showed considerably different preferences in their bundle selection. The paper examines the possible impact of these preferences and suggests there is a need to extend the metadiscourse knowledge of doctoral students in terms of lexical bundles.
期刊介绍:
The Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) is the preeminent journal of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA). ARAL is a peer reviewed journal that promotes scholarly discussion and contemporary understandings of language-related matters with a view to impacting on real-world problems and debates. The journal publishes empirical and theoretical research on language/s in educational, professional, institutional and community settings. ARAL welcomes national and international submissions presenting research related to any of the major sub-disciplines of Applied Linguistics as well as transdisciplinary studies. Areas of particular interest include but are not limited to: · Analysis of discourse and interaction · Assessment and evaluation · Bi/multilingualism and bi/multilingual education · Corpus linguistics · Cognitive linguistics · Language, culture and identity · Language maintenance and revitalization · Language planning and policy · Language teaching and learning, including specific languages and TESOL · Pragmatics · Research design and methodology · Second language acquisition · Sociolinguistics · Language and technology · Translating and interpreting.