"To Whom it May Concern": A Study on the Use of Lexical Bundles in Email Writing Tasks in an English Proficiency Test

Abstract

Lexical bundles are worthy of attention in both teaching and testing writing as they function as basic building blocks of discourse. This corpus-based study focuses on the rated writing responses to the email tasks in the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program ® General test (CELPIP-General) and explores the extent to which lexical bundles could help characterize the written responses of the test-takers of different English proficiency levels. Three subcorpora of email writing responses were created based on test-takers' proficiency levels. AntConc 3.4.4 was used to identify 2-to 6-word lexical bundles, which were then manually coded for their discourse functions. The results showed that test-takers of higher proficiency levels used more lexical bundles in terms of both bundle types and tokens compared with test-takers of lower proficiency level. The writing samples of different proficiency levels shared some lexical bundles, and overall they had similar proportional distributions of lexical bundle functions. Nevertheless, noticeable differences among the proficiency levels were observed in the proportional distributions of the subfunctions of stance bundles, discourse organizing bundles, and bundles of other functions. The identification of differential use of lexical bundles can contribute to a better understanding of English learners' email writing performance.Les expressions figées méritent notre attention tant en enseignement qu'en évaluation de l'écrit puisqu'elles jouent le rôle de composantes de base du discours. Cette étude basée sur des corpus porte sur des réponses écrites par courriel à des tâches et évalue la mesure dans laquelle les expressions figées pourraient aider à caractériser les réponses écrites des participants de différentes compétences en anglais. Trois sous corpus de réponses écrites par courriel ont été créés en fonction des niveaux de compétence des participants. AntConc 3.4.4 a servi dans l'identification d'expressions figées composées de 2 à 6 mots qui ont ensuite été codées manuellement selon leurs fonctions discursives. Les résultats indiquent que les participants de niveaux de compétence plus élevés employaient plus d'expressions figées et de types plus variés comparativement aux participants de niveaux de compétence plus bas. Les échantillons de textes de différents niveaux de compétence partageaient quelques expressions figées et, globalement, avaient des distributions proportionnelles d'expressions figées similaires. Toutefois, des différences notables entre les niveaux de compétence ont été observées dans la distribution proportionnelle des sous fonctions discursives. L'identification des différences dans l'emploi des expressions figées peut contribuer à une meilleure

A Lexical Profile Analysis of a Diagnostic Writing Assessment: The Relationship between Lexical Profiles and Writing Proficiency

“…The findings of the present study are consistent with previous studies (Ädel & Erman, 2012;Chen & Baker, 2010;Li & Volkov, 2018) which indicated that higher proficiency writers use more formulaic language in their writing. Previous studies typically equated proficiency as native or non-native writers, while the present study used precisely calculated holistic scores to quantify proficiency.…”

“…The findings from the present study of higher proficient writers using more formulaic language in their writing are consistent with previous studies (Ädel & Erman, 2012;Chen & Baker, 2010;Li & Volkov, 2018), with further support from the TAALES indices (Kyle, Crossley, & Berger, 2017). Hyland (2012) notes, "the absence of such clusters [formulaic language] reveal the lack of fluency of a novice or newcomer to that community" (p. 165).…”

Analysis of three-word lexical bundles in the argumentative essays of native and non-native writers at various levels of language development

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