Lexical bundles in published and student disciplinary writing: Examples from history and biology

For more than a century, linguists have been interested in the study of frequent word combinations. The present study investigated a special type of word combination, lexical bundles, defined as a sequence of three or more words that co-occur frequently in a particular register [Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Longman, London, 1999]. The goal was to improve the understanding of the function of lexical bundles in academic prose by comparing the use of such bundles by published authors in history and biology and by students at three different levels in those disciplines. The first part of this study focused on a corpus of published writing from history and biology journals. The most frequent four-word lexical bundles in that corpus (called target bundles) were identified and classified structurally and functionally. The second part concentrated on students' use of those target bundles. The findings of this study indicated that students rarely used these target bundles in their writing. In addition, when students did use certain bundles, their use did not correspond to the uses of bundles employed by professional authors. Finally, some pedagogical implications of the findings, as well as suggested paths for future research, are introduced and discussed. (C) 2004 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.