A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of Lexical Bundles in Assignments Written by Master’s Level International Students

在第二语言写作中，词块(lexical bundles)的重要性日益受到重视，已有研究探讨了二语写作中词块产出的特征与问题。然而，针对英语母语学生在使用词块过程中的发展特征与准确性问题的研究仍较为有限。本研究收集了29名国际学生在其研究生阶段撰写的课程作业，构建了一个包含超过8万个词的子语料库，旨在分析这些就读教育专业的国际学生在写作时所使用词块的模式。研究在语料库中提取高频词块，并依据Biber等人提出的分类体系及母语者写作中的目标词块，将其划分为六种结构类型和三种功能类型，进而对其频率与分布特征进行对比分析。研究结果显示：在词块的使用数量方面，国际学生整体使用偏少；但从使用的多样性来看，其词块的丰富性更高。在结构类型上，国际学生在使用以介词短语构成的词块(如含有of-短语的介词结构)和以名词短语构成的词块(如含有后置修饰语的名词结构)方面的频率明显低于母语学生。本研究有助于提升二语学习者对词块规范使用的重视，同时也为今后的写作教学中的目标设定与实践提供了有益启示。Lexical bundles in second language writing have been increasingly emphasized, researchers have explored the characteristics and problems of lexical bundles output in second language writing. However, few studies have addressed the developmental characteristics and accuracy issues of lexical bundles in the use of lexical bundles by native English speaker students. This study included a corpus of 29 students’ assignments writing during their postgraduate studies, creating a sub-corpus of over 80,000 tokens in order to explore the patterns of lexical bundles among the same cohort of international students majoring in education when they were writing their assignments. After extracting the high-frequency lexical bundles from the corpus, this study classified these bundles into six structural and three functional types based on Biber et al.’s taxonomy of bundles and the target bundles in native speakers’ assignments writing, and comparatively analyzed their frequency and distributional features. The results show that international students under-use lexical bundles in terms of quantity, but the richness of lexical bundles is higher. In terms of structure, international students use PP-based bundles (prepositional phrase with of-phrase fragment and other prepositional phrase fragments) and NP-based bundles (noun phrase with of-phrase fragment and noun phrase with other post-modifier fragments) less frequently than native students. This study is conducive to increasing the importance of second language learners’ correct use of lexical bundles, and it is also informative for the goal-setting and practicing process of writing teaching in the future.