Lexical Bundles in Thesis Abstracts by L1 Chinese Learners of English and U.S. Students

Lyu, Meng; Gee, Roger W.

doi:10.5539/elt.v13n1p141

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…This study revealed that the Chinese students produced significantly more LBs than American students, consistent with the finding in several previous studies that a considerably greater number of English LBs were used by L1 Chinese than L1 English writers ( Guan and Zheng, 2005 ; Hyland, 2008a ; Pang, 2009 ; Lou, 2010 ; Wei and Lei, 2011 ; Xu, 2012 ; Pan et al, 2016 ; Gao, 2017 ; Lyu and Gee, 2020 ). A similar finding is achieved with L1 Spanish speakers ( Pérez-Llantada, 2014 ), L1 Iranian speakers ( Jalali et al, 2008 ), and L1 Turkish speakers ( Güngör and Uysal, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…The results showed substantial frequency differences of LBs in structural and functional categories (e.g., the Chinese and American students used 1,640.83 and 786.87 tokens of VP-based LBs per million words, respectively). Similar results were achieved by Lyu and Gee (2020) who compared thesis abstracts written by Chinese and American master students of culture, linguistics, literature, and pedagogy. Li et al (2020) conducted a bundle-driven analysis to reveal sentence initial LBs in rhetorical moves of dissertation abstracts produced by British PhD students of arts and humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and physics.…”

Section: Studies On Lexical Bundlessupporting

confidence: 71%

“…In addition, BUDs distributed inequivalently across functional categories and rhetorical moves. This finding was new since most existing LB studies focus mainly on frequently used LBs (e.g., Hyland, 2008a;Lu and Deng, 2019;Lyu and Gee, 2020), but rarely on LBs of significantly different frequencies across corpora. By focusing on BUDs, this study revealed that the Chinese and American students drew on a highly similar resource of formulaic sequences but selected items with considerably different frequencies.…”

Section: Profiles Of Buds In the Two Corporamentioning

confidence: 96%

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A Corpus Study of Lexical Bundles Used Differently in Dissertations Abstracts Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

Bao

2022

Front. Psychol.

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This study examined lexical bundles (LBs) used differently by Chinese and American PhD students of linguistics in their dissertation abstracts. Two corpora were built, with each having 700 dissertation abstracts produced by Chinese and American PhD students of linguistics, respectively. The study then used lexical analysis software to retrieve frequently used three-word LBs, from which LBs having different frequencies at a significant level across the two corpora were identified and termed as bundles used differently (BUDs). BUDs were then categorized and analyzed manually in terms of structure, function, and distribution in rhetorical moves. The major findings were: (1) 57.14% of the frequently used LBs were BUDs, of which 90.67% had occurrences in both corpora. The BUDs distributed inequivalently across categories and moves, with the text-oriented category and the move of Result having the most BUDs; and (2) BUDs exhibited two major patterns: the Chinese and American students filled different constituents into structurally and functionally similar constructions, and used LBs of dissimilar functions to fulfill the same communicative purposes. These findings indicate that variations in LB use have a high pedagogic value and confirm the need for using corpora to identify and teach core genre-specific vocabularies to second/foreign language learners.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Studies On Lexical Bundlessupporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Profiles Of Buds In the Two Corporamentioning

confidence: 96%

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A Corpus Study of Lexical Bundles Used Differently in Dissertations Abstracts Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

Bao

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…These findings indicate a higher frequency of MLBs usage in CUS compared to ALC. This observation aligns with previous studies that have reported a significantly greater number of bundles within the EAP writings of L1 Chinese speakers compared to L1 English speakers (Hyland, 2008a; Lyu & Gee, 2019). The higher usage of LBs by the Chinese students may reflect their heavier reliance on prefabricated language due to lower English proficiency (Hyland, 2008a; Paquot & Granger, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…The majority of LB research within the abstract genre has been concentrated on journal articles (Kim & Lee, 2021; Omidian et al, 2018; Qi & Pan, 2020). However, recognizing that dissertations and RAs constitute “two distinct genres” (El-Dakhs, 2018, p. 58), recent scholarship has begun to investigate LBs in dissertation or thesis abstracts authored by students from China and the United States (Bao & Liu, 2022; Lu & Deng, 2019; Lyu & Gee, 2019), and those by students from different L1 backgrounds (Li et al, 2020). These studies have scrutinized general LBs (Lu & Deng, 2019; Lyu & Gee, 2019), LBs with noteworthy variations in token frequencies across corpora (Bao & Liu, 2022), and sentence-initial LBs (Li et al, 2020).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Analysis of Move-Specific Lexical Bundles in Linguistics Dissertation Abstracts: A Study of Students from China and the United States

Bao,

Liu

2023

Sage Open

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This article compared three-word move-specific lexical bundles (MLBs) in dissertation abstracts authored by linguistics doctoral students from China and the United States. Two separate corpora were constructed for analysis: (1) The China Linguistics PhD Abstracts Corpus (CLC), consisting of 700 abstracts totaling 613,713 words generated by doctoral students from China specializing in linguistics, and (2) the America Linguistics PhD Abstracts Corpus (ALC), comprising 700 abstracts totaling 247,359 words written by American doctoral students in linguistics. The identification of MLBs was based on log-likelihood values, indicating a notably higher number of instances within a specific move in contrast to the overall corpus. The study then proceeded to compare the structures, functions, and communicative purposes of MLBs in the two corpora. The findings of the analysis are as follows: (1) Chinese students employed a higher percentage of NP- and PP-based MLBs but a lower proportion of VP-based MLBs, and both groups used different words within similar structures; (2) Chinese students employed a higher percentage of research- and participant-oriented MLBs but a lower proportion of text-oriented MLBs, and the two groups used dissimilar MLBs to fulfill similar functions; and (3) the two groups employed distinct MLBs to achieve identical communicative purposes, with Chinese students utilizing MLBs specific to the CLC corpus. These findings highlight the pedagogical significance of MLBs and underscore the importance of corpus linguistics in identifying and teaching essential move-specific vocabulary to second/foreign language learners.

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A Contrastive Study of Lexical Bundles Expressing Gratitude in Dissertation Acknowledgments Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

Bao,

Liu

2024

Sage Open

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This study compared the five-word lexical bundles (LBs) expressing gratitude in acknowledgments of dissertations written by Chinese and American PhD students of linguistics. Two corpora were built: (1) The Chinese University Dissertation Acknowledgments Collection (CUC) which contained 700 acknowledgments with a total of 300,686 tokens, and (2) the American University Dissertation Acknowledgments Collection (AUC) which contained 700 acknowledgments with a total of 493,045 tokens. We then retrieved five-word LBs, of which LBs expressing gratitude in CUC and AUC were identified, categorized, and compared with respect to frequency, forms and structures. Major findings were: (1) the Chinese students used a substantially greater number of gratitude LBs than the American students, (2) the two groups used considerably different gratitude LBs, and (3) the two groups mainly relied on verb phrase-based LBs to express gratitude, but the Chinese students used a larger proportion of noun phrase- yet a smaller proportion of verb phrase-based items than the American students, and (4) the two groups used dissimilar structures and words to construct gratitude LBs. These findings enrich our knowledge of linguistic patterns in dissertation acknowledgments as a unique genre of academic prose, and provide corpus-based learning materials for students tasked with properly expressing gratitude in their theses or dissertations.

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Lexical Bundles in Thesis Abstracts by L1 Chinese Learners of English and U.S. Students

Cited by 4 publications

References 18 publications

A Corpus Study of Lexical Bundles Used Differently in Dissertations Abstracts Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

A Corpus Study of Lexical Bundles Used Differently in Dissertations Abstracts Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

Comparative Analysis of Move-Specific Lexical Bundles in Linguistics Dissertation Abstracts: A Study of Students from China and the United States

A Contrastive Study of Lexical Bundles Expressing Gratitude in Dissertation Acknowledgments Produced by Chinese and American PhD Students of Linguistics

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