TY - JOUR
T1 - With the rapid development
T2 - A contrastive analysis of lexical bundles in dissertation abstracts by Chinese and L1 English doctoral students
AU - Lu, Xiaofei
AU - Deng, Jinlei
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. This research was funded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Planning Project of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 18YJA740010 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - This study compared the use of lexical bundles in dissertation abstracts written in English by Chinese and L1 English doctoral students. Our data consisted of 13,596 and 4,755 abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese students at Tsinghua University (the Tsinghua Corpus) and L1 English students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (the MIT Corpus), respectively. With a combination of frequency and dispersion criteria, 165 and 134 four-word bundles were identified from the Tsinghua Corpus and the MIT Corpus, respectively. These bundles were categorized structurally and functionally. Results revealed substantial differences in the frequencies with which bundles of different structural and functional categories were used by Chinese and L1 English students, as well as in the specific types of bundles of different categories they used. A close analysis of these differences revealed that Chinese students exhibited incomplete knowledge of some aspects of the English lexico-grammatical system, signs of transfer of Chinese language features and discourse conventions, and insufficient awareness of bundles characteristic of hard science disciplines.
AB - This study compared the use of lexical bundles in dissertation abstracts written in English by Chinese and L1 English doctoral students. Our data consisted of 13,596 and 4,755 abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese students at Tsinghua University (the Tsinghua Corpus) and L1 English students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (the MIT Corpus), respectively. With a combination of frequency and dispersion criteria, 165 and 134 four-word bundles were identified from the Tsinghua Corpus and the MIT Corpus, respectively. These bundles were categorized structurally and functionally. Results revealed substantial differences in the frequencies with which bundles of different structural and functional categories were used by Chinese and L1 English students, as well as in the specific types of bundles of different categories they used. A close analysis of these differences revealed that Chinese students exhibited incomplete knowledge of some aspects of the English lexico-grammatical system, signs of transfer of Chinese language features and discourse conventions, and insufficient awareness of bundles characteristic of hard science disciplines.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jeap.2019.03.008
DO - 10.1016/j.jeap.2019.03.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063952607
SN - 1475-1585
VL - 39
SP - 21
EP - 36
JO - Journal of English for Academic Purposes
JF - Journal of English for Academic Purposes
ER -