Author(s)

Zhang Saiwei ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China

Corresponding Author

Zhang Saiwei

ABSTRACT

Four-word lexical bundles are crucial in assessing English proficiency in academic writing. This study aims to examine similarities and differences in four-word lexical bundles' structural and functional use by native and non-native English-speaking students in economics papers from the MICUSP database, exploring reasons for these differences related to second language acquisition and teaching, and suggests improvements. Corpora were first cleaned and analyzed using AntConc, then categorized by Biber et al.'s structural taxonomy[1] and Hyland's functional taxonomy[2]. Results found that Native students favored noun/prepositional phrases and research-oriented patterns, while non-natives used more varied verb phrases and text-oriented patterns. The study discussed causes like L1 transfer in L2 acquisition and text focus in L2 teaching, aiming to inform future ESL pedagogy.

KEYWORDS

Four-Word Lexical Bundles; Native and Non-Native; Upper-Level Students; Bible's Structural Taxonomy; Hyland's Functional Taxonomy; Economic Research Papers; ESL Pedagogy

CITE THIS PAPER

Zhang Saiwei, A Comparative Study on the Structural and Functional Features of Four-Word Bundles Used by English Native and Non-Native Upper-Level Students in the Economics Research Papers. Transactions on Comparative Education (2025) Vol. 7: 73-82. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/trance.2025.070211.

REFERENCES

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[2] Hyland, K. (2008a). As can be seen: lexical bundles and disciplinary variation. English for Specific Purposes, 27, 4-21. 
[3] Swales, J. (2004). Research genres: Exploration and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[4] Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse: English in a global context. London: Continuum.
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[10] Hyland, K. (2008b). Academic clusters: Text patterning in published and postgraduate writing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 41-62. 
[11] Cortes, V. (2004). Lexical bundles in published and student disciplinary writing: Examples from history and biology. English for Specific Purposes, 23(4), 397-423. 
[12] Simpson-Vlach, R., & Ellis, N. C. (2010). An academic formulas list: New methods in phraseology research. Applied Linguistics, 31(4), 487-512. 
[13] Ädel, A., & Erman, B. (2012). Recurrent word combinations in academic writing by native and non-native speakers of English: A lexical bundles approach. English for Specific Purposes, 31(2), 81-92. 
[14] Karabacak, E., & Qin, J. (2013). Comparison of lexical bundles used by Turkish, Chinese, and American university students. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 622-628. 
[15] Römer, U. (2009). The inseparability of lexis and grammar. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 141-163. 
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