A Comparative Study of Lexical Bundles in Soft Science Articles Written by Native and Iranian Authors

Lexical bundles have been focused on by linguists because they pave the way for learners to utilize a series of co-occurring expressions in their productions instead of single words. The present paper sheds light on the lexical bundles utilized in Soft Science articles written by Native and Iranian Authors (NA and IA) with the elementary purpose of analyzing the structural and functional similarities and differences. The secondary purpose was to present a list of explored lexical bundles employed in these articles. In the light of structural classification, Noun phrase + of-phrase fragments and other prepositional phrases were the most widespread and Other passive fragments and Verb phrases with personal pronoun we were the least employed structures in the articles of NA and IA. Considering the functional classification, the most commonly employed function by both NA and IA was procedure. Native authors employed citation and Iranians utilized generalization with the least frequency. The author recommends course developers to incorporate a list of the most common lexical bundles beside the existing lists of single words to enrich the students’ knowledge of vocabulary.

A Comparative Study of Lexical Bundles in Soft Science Articles Written by Native and Iranian Authors Keywords:

Lexical Bundles , Soft Science Articles , Corpus , Frequency , Formulaic Expressions