An exploratory study on an integrated genre-based approach for the instruction of academic lexical phrases

This study explores a holistic approach in the teaching and learning of academic lexical phrases. It incorporates the Sydney school genre-based pedagogy and corpus-informed explicit instruction into the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) genre-based framework for a better “text in context” exemplification of genre knowledge and genre related language features (including lexical phrases). A distinction is made between general (or “lexical bundles” in traditional terms) and move-specific lexical phrases in the academic genre of research paper. An intervention study using this approach was conducted over a semester in an intact classroom with Masters students in China. The results indicated significant gains in receptive knowledge of lexical phrases and genre structure by the participants, and learners of different starting levels showed similar final attainment after instruction. The considerable number of appropriate uses of both types of lexical phrases in a rewriting task further supported the potential of this approach in academic lexical instruction. More importantly, a multiple regression analysis was performed and implies that the growth in the use of general lexical phrases cannot be isolated from the development of genre knowledge and specific language features such as the move-specific lexical phrases.