1. you want me to in the case of can I have a
as a result of I don’t want to what do you think
or something like that
percent of the
on the other hand one of the most going to
be
the nature of the let’s take up the the
end of the
‘”LEXICAL BUNDLES”
Vasundhara RAWAT 107/13
THE ENGLISH & FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY
HYDERABAD

2. LEXICAL BUNDLES
What does ‘LEXICAL BUNDLE’ mean?
The word Lexical has been derived
from Greek word lexis which means
words .
Where Greek word ‘Lexicos’ means
‘Of Words’, in English it is ‘Lexical’
that means ‘of words’
Therefore, ‘Lexical Bundles’ means
‘Bundles of Words’

3. Lexical Bundles are groups of words that occur
repeatedly together within the same register.
Lexical bundles are also referred to as
 “N-grams”
 “clusters” or
 “chunks” and
are “extended collocations which appear more
frequently than expected by chance, helping
to shape and contributing to our sense of
coherence in a text”

4. Lexical Bundles
Are not idiomatic ; as idioms tend to have
fixedness in meaning and form. For example’
“kick the bucket”
Not complete grammatical structures
Bridge two phrases,
either two noun phrases (N+N)
or noun and a verb phrase (N+V)
 May also introduce a dependent clause.

5. Importance/why to teach?
• Lexical bundles are used for the most important and the overt
considerations of the register.
• Serve as building blocks of a typical discourse
• Important indicators for determining the success of language
users within specific discourse communities.
• Crucially important for the construction of discourse in all
university registers.
percentage of words in conversation in lexical
bundles
4-word bundles
3-wordbundles
phrasal verbs
non-recurrent

6. CLASSIFICATION OF LEXICAL BUNDLES
ON THE BASIS OF:
 STRUCTURAL PATTERNS
 FUNCTION IN A DISCOURSE CONTEXT

7. Structural patterns
percentage Structural type example
Conversation
44% Personal pronoun + lexical
VP(+complement clause)
I don’t know what
13% (aux+) active V (+) have a look at
12% Yes-no and wh-question
fragments
can I have a
what do you want
Academic Prose
33% Preposition+ NP fragment as a result of
30% NP with post-modifier the nature of the

8. Functional classification
Stance Expressions
Discourse organizers
Referential expressions
Special conversational functions

9. I.STANCE EXPRESSIONS Conversation Academic Prose
I-A Epistemic Stance
Personal I don’t know what
I don’t know if
I don’t think so
oh I don’t know
Impersonal the fact that the
I-B Attitude/Modality
Stance
Desire I don’t want to
do you want to
if you want to go
I would like to
Obligation /Directive
Personal:
Impersonal:
you don’t have to
going to have to
do you want me
it is necessary to

10. Intentional/prediction
Personal: I was going to
are you going to
I’m not going to
are we going to
Impersonal: it’s going to be
going to be
Ability
Impersonal: It is possible to
II DISCOURSE ORGANISERS Conversation Academic prose
II-A Topic Introduction
/Focus
what do you think
do you know what
have a look at
II-B Topic Elaboration nothing to do with
know what I mean
was going to say
on the other hand

11. III. REFERENTIAL
EXPRESSIONS
Conversation Academic prose
III-A Identification/focus one of the most
III-B Imprecision or something like that
III-C Specification of
attributes
Quantity specification
Tangible Framing
Attributes
Intangible Framing
Attributes
in the form of
per cent of the
in the case of
as a result of
in the absence of
the way in which
III-D Time/place/text
reference
Time reference
Multifunctional reference the end of the
At the end of
at the same time
the end of the
• -

12. IV. SPECIAL CONVERSATIONAL FUNCTIONS
Politeness Thank you very much
Simple enquiry What are you doing
Reporting I said to him

13. CORPORA
• ALESS(Active learning of English for Science Students) Learner
corpus http://ale.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/joomla/
• LONGMAN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN ENGLISH CORPUS
• International corpus of Learner English (ICLE)
• Japanese English as a Foreign Language(JEFLL)
http://jefll.corpuscobo.net/
• Cambridge Learner Corpus(CLC)
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/elt/catalogue/subject/custom/
item3646603/Cambridge-English-Corpus-Cambridge-Learner-
Corpus/?site_locale=en_GB
• Professional English Research Consortium Corpus(PERC)
(reference corpora)
http://www.perc21.org/corpus_project/cpe_project.html
• British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus

14. Advantages to learners
• Of more importance for learners of specialized
academic discourse communities. For
example, EAP.
• Language learners achieve naturalness in use
of language.
• Avoid communication difficulties due to
overuse, underuse or misuse of formulaic
language.

15. Teaching Lexical Bundles
Through COCA
Through Lexical Tutor

16. Exercises
• Example 1
Infer the meaning of the lexical bundles from
the concordances:-
D:Corpus of Contemporary American English
(COCA).htm

17. • Example 2
Fill in the blanks with the appropriate lexical bundles
given below
(the ratio of the, at the rate of, as the function of , to be
able to, can be used to, as well as, on the other
hand)
1. The history of cultural theory __________ the
current situation of cultural theory is the precipitate
of dozens of such socio-cultural episodes.
2. Capital structuring depends on __________ of the
debt capital to the equity capital.
3. It defines __________ writer’s perceptions of the
societal changes.

18. • Example 3
Classify the following lexical bundles according to the
registers viz. Business, Science
, Humanities, Research, Engineering, Academic
writing
(at the rate of , in the ratio of , in the absence of
, according to the law of, it is important to , for a
maximum of, all of the above, for the purpose of, at
the time of , is shown in, is based on, the accuracy of
the, the effect of the, will be discussed in the, in this
study the)

19. Example 4.Match the following lexical bundles with their
corresponding stances
1. the end of each i. topic elaboration
2. will consist of ii. time reference
3. it is important to iii. conditions
4. if you are iv. prediction
5. on the other hand v. personal (oblig)
6. you are responsible for vi. Impersonal(oblig)

20. Resources
 The Lexical Syllabus(A new approach to language teaching) by
Dave Willis
 Formulaic language: Pushing the Boundaries by Alison Wray
 University Language(A corpus based study of spoken and
written registers) by Douglas Biber
 The Frequency and Use of Lexical Bundles in Conversation and
Academic Prose by Susan Conrad / Douglas Biber
 Lexical Bundles in Learner Writing : An Analysis of Formulaic
Language in the ALESS Learner Corpus by David ALLEN
 Lexical Bundles and the Construction of an Academic Voice :A
Pedagogical Perspective by Winnie Pang

21. I DONOT KNOW if possible to you know what I
you want me to in the case of can I have a
as a result of
THANK YOU !
I don’t want to
what do you think
or something like that percent of the
on the other hand one of the most going to be
the nature of th let’s take up the the end of
the