Use of formulaic bundles by non-native English graduate writers and published authors in applied linguistics

This corpus-based cross-sectional study examines how advanced non-native English graduate students of applied linguistics at different levels of study used target formulaic bundles in their academic papers. First, five-unit formulaic bundles were extracted from a one-million-word reference corpus composed of 128 published articles in applied linguistics. Then the use of these target bundles was examined in 136 academic papers written by 20 non-native English graduate students of applied linguistics at four levels of study and 15 published articles by English-speaking expert writers in the same field. It was found that, as the level of study increased, students used a greater number and variety of target bundles. Specifically, non-native graduate students at the higher levels of study used more bundles characteristic of academic writing (e.g., noun phrases with post-modifier fragments or certain prepositional phrases) than those at the lower levels. Furthermore, the former group used more bundles as text organizers (e.g., explanation, exemplification, and focus) and stance bundles than the latter group. The pedagogical implications are suggested regarding what and how to teach non-native English graduate writers regarding the use of formulaic bundles.