“What are you talking about?” An analysis of lexical bundles in Japanese junior high school textbooks

Northbrook, Julian; Conklin, Kathy

Abstract

In a communicative approach to language teaching, students are presented with ‘authentic’ language, which is thought to allow them to produce it in a nativelike way. The current study explores whether the lexical bundles in communicative Japanese junior high school textbooks are representative of conversational English. To do this, we use a corpus-based approach that compares the most frequent lexical bundles in the textbooks to those in an English reference corpus. The study finds that although lexical bundles are very frequent in the textbooks, and conform relatively well to English patterns at shorter lengths (3-word lexical bundles), they deviate considerably at longer ones (4-, 5- and 6-words). This has important implications for the communicative utility of the language in the textbooks.

Citation

Northbrook, J., & Conklin, K. (2018). “What are you talking about?” An analysis of lexical bundles in Japanese junior high school textbooks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 23(3), 311-334

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 2, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 30, 2018
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2018
• Deposit Date: Oct 29, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 29, 2018
• Print ISSN: 1384-6655
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 311-334
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1202460
• Publisher URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijcl.16024.nor