PHRASAL COMLEXITY IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH

LEARNERS’ ACADEMIC WRITING: A CORPUS BASED

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

By

Mr. Muhammad Izhar

Reg. No. 6157

Supervised by
Professor Dr. Sajid Ahmad

Master of Philosophy
In
English

at

Riphah International University, Faisalabad Campus, Pakistan

March 2019

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 ABSTRACT

Lexical bundles are groups of words which come repeatedly in academic writings.
The purpose of this study has investigated the lexical complexity which is found in
Pakistani academic writings. The second purpose of this study was comparing lexical
bundles in Pakistani English learners’ writing across Pakistani English learners’
doctoral theses (Anjum, 2019). In order to answer the purpose, this study has
developed a theoretical framework based on structural categories of lexical bundles as
proposed by Biber (2006). Being a corpus-based study, the present research has
extracted an argumentative essay written by Pakistani learners from online source:
International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE).
The corpus contained 400 essays conducted on the given topics.
The size of corpus was about 94,523 words. This study tagged a
data though Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT) and processed
through AntConc.3.4.4.0. The current study has devised formulaic
patterns (Hyland, 2016) of each phrasal category (Biber, 2006). The
70 formulaic patterns were devised according to each lexical
category. For analysis purpose, the current study has followed
functional categories as model proposed by Biber et al. (2004). The
findings of the study revealed that the Pakistani academic writings
(i.e. Learners’ essays and doctoral theses) included more other noun
phrases as compared to other phrasal categories (i.e. noun phrase +
of, prepositional phrase +of, other prepositional phrase, passive +
prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adjective, be +
noun/adjectival phrase, and others). Moreover, in these results the
Pakistani learners’ excessively employed noun phrases to create
content complexity through lexical bundles. The Pakistani learners’
argumentative essays used less 4-word noun phrase bundles
21.23% than Pakistani Academic Doctoral Theses 37.9%. On the
other hand, Pakistani learners used “other noun phrases” in essays
48.01% more than Pakistani doctoral theses writing 23.7%. In case
of Prepositional phrase + of, Pakistani learners in Doctoral theses
used more 23.4% bundles than Pakistani learners’ essays 16.18%.

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Moreover, the following phrasal categorizations (i.e. Other
prepositional phrase, passive + prepositional phase, and
anticipatory it structure) were more found in Pakistani doctoral
theses 41.2%, 14.8% and 9% than Pakistani learners in their
argumentative essays 2.91%, 2.9% and 3% respectively. In this
continuation, the current study compared Pakistani learners’ essays
formulaic patterns as results with doctoral theses in which it was
revealed that doctoral theses used more phrasal categories as
compared to the argumentative essays by Pakistani learners. This is
the point to show that Pakistani doctoral theses used more phrasal
categories to create complexities than Pakistani learners’ essays.
The conclusion has shown that Pakistani learners of doctoral theses
establish complexity more though phrasal categories than learners
of argumentative essays. This study has limited its analysis to 400
argumentative essays but future researches can be conducted on
larger data, other languages, and other disciplines’ language.

Keywords: Phrasal complexity, Pakistani academic writing,

argumentative essays, noun phrases, prepositional phrases, corpus-
based study

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on lexical bundles in Pakistani English

academic writings of learners. The main focus of the study is on how
to understand the construction of lexical bundles; how lexical
complexities and variations influence on Pakistani learners’ writings.
This is a new way to study lexical items in form of bundles using
corpus technique. In this domain, this study has studied lexical
bundles at different levels of words in Pakistani learner English
writings. The ultimate purpose of this study is seeing the differences
between the register of Pakistani learners’ writing and other
registers of Pakistani English.

1.1 Background of the Study

Lexical bundles can be defined as the regularly occurring lexical sequences in

a register which have gained much importance a few decades ago (Biber, Conard &
Cortes, 2004; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conard, & Finegan 1999). Lexical bundles
citied as N-grams though do not suitable with the traditionally idealized units of
language, but it may cover number of structures e.g. in this study, we should be noted
that. Nonetheless, these are discovered entirely based on their frequency within the

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texts and may be examined as empirically derived units. Moreover, these lexical
bundles do have recognizable functions within a specific register. For example, Biber,
Conrad and Cortes (2004) observed that classroom teaching inclines to characterize
more personal stance bundles (e.g. you have to do) than academic prose, which in
contrast characterize more personal stance bundles (e.g. it is necessary to). In addition
to, discourse organizing bundles were observed to vary across spoken and written
registers: if you look at was a ordinary bundles appeared in the former. Whereas, on
the other hand, is observed frequently in the later. In his monograph entitled
University Language Douglas Biber (2006) observes that these lexical bundles are
critically significant for the development of discourse in all the university registers’
(p.174). Hence, for the learners of English for academic purposes or for the learners
belonging to any other specific academic discourse communities, the knowledge
about the usage of lexical bundles is most important. For the language learners, the
knowledge and use of variety of formulaic language assists them to achieve
genuineness in the language use. In contrast with other, the misuse of formulaic
language is a potential source of communication difficulties (Millar, 2009). Applying
eye-tracking methodology, Millar computed the native speaker reading times of
collocations of Japanese learners’ academic writing and their native speaker
equivalents. The discoveries stipulate that learner collocations take longer to process
when reading because these are divergent from native speaker norms.

As far as linguistic variation is concerned, Trudgill (1991) as a pioneer in this

particular field has worked to study the linguistic variation in English and its different
dialects of England. He propagates the certain part as diverted from lexical,
phonological as well as historical level concerning with the level of syntactic which
attained insignificant attention from all different dialectologists. He further clearified
and observed changes in English “The further you travel, the more different dialects
will be found and the reason is that English, like all other languages is changing and
the change starts from a specific area and spreads to neighboring areas” (Trudgil,
1991, p. 7). It was later opened that English spoken in Britain was the dialect but not a
language. He mentioned that Standard English was named as a variety that was
featured with some certain lexical forms and set of grammatical forms. He was of the
view that social dialect was not the same as other dialects of English in accordance
with its great importance.

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 According to Hoey (2005), who highlights the problem as concerned with
“Lexical Primings.” Discursive exhibition to language fortifies the relationships of
words, containing semantic, collocation, prosodic and colligation relationships.
Although, all language users’ primings will vary (because of the variation of
language) resulting in the unfold patterns of language use and levels of adequacy
within some particular registers. So, these priming’s deduce and generate formulaic
language such as lexical bundles. Ken Hyland builds the following remarks about the
lexical bundles: they are close to writers and readers who are aware of them and who
punctually take part in a specific discourse, their very genuineness indicating the
talented anticipation in a given community. On contrary, the omission of such clusters
might expose the need of fluency of a novice or a newcomer to that community (2008,
p.2). Still, learners are hardly knowledgeable about the use of these lexical bundles
when they started to go through the academic discourse in a second language, even if
they are undergone in the anticipation in their first language in such communities. The
study has exhibited that English language learners of a specific group generate
language characteristics in their writing which varies from the native speakers’ norms
(Alternberg & Granger, 2001; Hyland & Milton, 1997). These researches analyze,
entitled as contrastive inter-language analysis (Granger, 2002), have displayed in
many expressions that the language learners’ underuse, overuse, and misuse the
specific language proponents and functions. For instance, Chinese L1 learners of
English language differ in their usage of boosting and hedging in the academic
writing (Hyland & Milton, 1997) because they lean to underuse the hedging in their
academic essays mainly in authoritative tone rather than less-authoritative one used in
native speaker essays (ibid). Lexical bundles do also been speculated in the learner
writings (Cortes, 2002; Rica-Peromingo, 2009). After comparing the results of corpus
of an undergraduate Spanish learner and American students and some other
professional native speaker writers, Rica-Peromingo (2009) signified that there were
some important and notable differences or variations in the type and amount of
learners’ use of such lexical bundles. Learners inclined to overuse and underuse the
specific language units, like linking or stance adverbials, in methods varying from the
native speaker writers. The objectives of the present research are to scrutinize the
learners’ use of formulaic language in their written presentation of science research
articles. These discussions/ findings will be matched to the results deduced from
reference corpora and other current researches (e.g. Biber, Conrad & Cortes, 2004;
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Hyland, 2008) and the ratio of linking between the learners’ creation and native
speaker writings are estimated. A crucial element of fluent linguistic production is the
control of numerous word proclamations cited as chunks, clusters or lexical bundles.
Perhaps, not literal formulaic by Wrsy’s (2002) definition, which claims that the
orders are kept in the mind in a mental lexical where these are stuck together in a
daily’s discourse. Naturally these bundles are statistically more discursive series of
words in any group of texts: increased clusters that seem more frequently than
presumed possibly (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). They are
approved clearly with the help of software as supported in corpus analysis that
redeems multiword items with the definite amount and the classification basis and
therefore are neither naturally nor usually a whole grammatical item (Biber, 2006),
bringing up the strands which were found in the previous case. They are closer to the
practitioners of language and have traditional discourse and pragmatic functions. The
frequency noting criteria is hence considered supreme and it discriminates these
bundles from collocational frames of preselected productive patterns and from
predetermined expressions (Renouf & Sinclair, 1999).

The motivation behind the current study was taken up

following the previous studies conducted on learners’ writings in
Pakistani English, have indicated the unique linguistic characteristics
(Shahkir, 2013; Ahmad & Mahmood, 2015; Zahida, Mahmood &
Mussarat, 2016; Urooj, Mahmood & Rasool, 2016; Maimoona, 2018).
All these studies have greatly focused on the co-occurring linguistic
features in Pakistani in the language of Pakistani learners’ writings.
But no studies, so far has investigated the lexical bundles or
formulaic language structures in the language Pakistani learner’s
writings which help in building the discourse structures in Pakistani
English learners’ writings. The present study aims to explore the
lexical bundles or clusters being employed by Pakistani learners in
their writings which help them building their discourse in Pakistani
academic writing.

The present study purposes to investigate the comparative

study of phrasal complexity at clause level of Pakistani Academic

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learners’ writings. In order to find out phrasal complexity, the
current study has proposed to examine formulaic patterns of noun
phrases at 4 word level lexical bundles. This study has followed the
model on lexical bundles as proposed by Biber (2006) and followed
by Hyland in his study for exploring noun phrases at 3, 4 and 5 word
levels. This study designs formulaic patterns for each component of
the model. The detail of the formulaic patterns has been given (in
chapter 4).

Lexical bundles are persistent patterns of three or more word

items which have significant role in academic writing since it has
been a formal structural requirement. The structural requirements
vary in accordance with academic disciplines (Wood, 2015). The
intelligent use of lexical bundles may assist learners in writing to
make it more logical and coherent (Hyland, 2008). Another efficient
use of lexical bundles can also help the teachers to create more
effective lessons that may assist learners to be more proficient
learners in the field of education.

Lexical bundles are groups of words that occur repeatedly together within the
same register. the term lexical has been driven from Greek lexis which means words
where Greek word lexicos means ‘of word ‘ .In English lexical bundles that means
‘of words’ therefore ‘lexical bundles’ means ‘bundles of words’ like N-gram, chunks
and clusters. The formation of bundles is noun plus noun and noun plus verb.

Previous research on disciplinary variation of lexical bundles

has found that they differ between disciplines in terms of overall
frequency, structural type, and functional use. For example, Hyland
(2008) found that writing in electrical engineering used more
distinct types of bundles than did writing in business studies,
applied linguistics, or biology. Further, of the specific bundles used
by the engineers, many were not found in the writing of other fields.
On the other hand, biology writing used fewer bundles than any of
the other fields, which Hyland states may be related to how

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arguments in that field are situated and framed, as compared to
engineering. He speculates that engineering writing may be more
abstract while biology is more focused on being concrete.

When looking at the structural and functional variation

between these fields, Hyland also found that writers in biology and
engineering more frequently used bundles with a passive structure,
while biology and applied linguistics used higher proportions of
bundles including a prepositional phrase + of. Similar differences
arise in the distribution of functional bundles between all groups.
This research is useful for helping provide a basic understanding of
which lexical bundles are discipline-specific and which are shared
more broadly.

Other research has focused on using these descriptions of

professional writing in different disciplines and comparing that with
the frequency, structure, and function of lexical bundles as they
occur in learner writing. For example, Cortes (2004) compared the
writing of learners and professionals in history and biology. She
found that learners often did not use the same bundles that
professionals did, and when they did use the same bundles the ways
in which learners used them were different from the professionals.

A better understanding how lexical bundles are used by

professionals in both applied linguistics and literature writing can
help to better inform the writing curriculum at Longdong University.
It is also important to understand how the learners are currently
using bundles, and if they are using shared bundles or structures,
how the learners’ use compares to the professionals. To do this, it is
necessary to examine how bundles vary in use according to
frequency, structure, and function in each discipline, and compare
how the learners are currently using these target bundles.

1.2 Brief Overview of Prior Studies

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 A number of studies have been conducted on Pakistani
registers. Firstly, the study conducted by Shakir (2013), who made a
study on advertising register and it belonged to Pakistani media. In
this study, he studied linguistic variation and different approaches
on external and internal comparisons. This research highly stressed
and focused on the variation of linguistics features that there is an
urgency to explore the Pakistani registers to identify and
differentiate Pakistani non-native English. This study ignored the
previous researches conducted due to their reliance on frequency of
individual linguistics features and these were based on
unrepresentative data. His research contained 137 Magazine and 37
Newspaper. He also investigated that how Pakistani print media
varied with reference of source and product category on five textual
dimensions.

There is a need to explain the distinct variety in detail. This

study would strive to examine the linguistic characteristics of
Pakistani English on linguistic dimensions through multi-dimensional
analysis which has successfully been applied on register variation
(Shakir, 2013; Biber, 1988; Ahmad & Mahmood, 2015), dialectal
variation between American and British English (Biber, 1988; Helt,
2001) and inter-varietal comparisons previously (Xiao, 2009). The
purpose of this study is to examine the various spoken and written
registers of Pakistani English (Hay, Maclagan & Gordon, 2008),
included in ICLE corpus of Pakistani English, through
multidimensional analysis which would help to recognize the
linguistic dimensions of variation in Pakistani English.

Another study, in the same vein, explored register of press

news reportage in Pakistani English (Ahmad & Mahmood, 2015). He
has compiled the representative corpus of Pakistani press news
reporting from the most circulating newspapers in five provinces of
Pakistan. He has collected 400 texts from five newspapers that
together made 2000 texts comprised of around 2.3 million words.

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He has explored that Pakistani press news reporting is different from
British news reporting. Also, internal variation among sub categories
of press news reporting has been highlighted. Another study has
tried to locate the variation across academic writing of Pakistani
university students using old and new MD. For this purpose she has
built up corpus of 8.3 million words based on the research
dissertations of M. Phil and Ph.D. graduates. Her major objective is
to explore linguistic variation across disciplines (humanities, social
sciences and sciences) as well as across research sections (e.g.
introduction, literature review, methodology). She found that
Pakistani academic writing conforms to the norms of British
academic writing; however, the distinctive trends have been viewed
in Pakistani English which could be taken as norms in this non-native
variety (Ayers, 2008).

1.3 Significance of the Study

The formulaic language patterns or lexical bundles which are used in
academic writing or published academic writing most frequently are the distinct
linguistic features. The knowledge of the use of the formulaic language patterns can
help to the learners to achieve naturalness in their language use. So, there is a
significant need to learn the knowledge of these phrasal complexity or formulaic
language patterns to create successful, effective and register convergent discourse.

The current study has been identified the formulaic language patterns which
used frequently in Pakistani Academic writing. The study has further categorized and
Pakistani doctoral theses have been selected for this study to analyze what is the
frequency of these formulaic language patterns in their writings and how Pakistani
scholar developing the discourse in their writings. The three representative disciplines
of Pakistani academic writing have been selected, e.g., Social Science, Applied
Science and Natural Science.

The analysis has been performed by focusing on the occurrences and

grammatical class of lexical bundles and the function and role of these formulaic
patterns in the Pakistani doctoral theses. The purpose of the current study to identify
the formulaic language patterns in Pakistani academic writing and how these patterns

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are important to develop discourse. The identification of these formulaic language
patterns can help the learners to attain the communicative competence. The
pedagogical implication and recommendations have been suggested according to the
findings of the current research. The directions for the future researcher have also
given for further exploration.

1.4 Statement of the Problem

The current study has been conducted to identify the lexical bundles across
Pakistani academic writing. No doubt, various researches have been conducted on
the individual linguistics features of Pakistani English in past to claim the Pakistani
English as an individual variety, but the aspect of lexical bundles in Pakistani
academic writing is remaining yet to explore. To explore the lexical bundles and their
role, numerous studies have been conducted worldwide but in few studies have been
conducted to explore lexical bundles. A study has been conducted by (Yousaf &
Shahzad, 2018) which is based on identification the frequency of structural lexical
bundles across the Pakistani academic writing. Yet, there is need of further
exploration of lexical bundles in Pakistani academic writing at both levels structural
and functional. There is also need to explore the role of these lexical bundles in
Pakistani academic writing. Thus, the current study contributes to the claim that
establish the individuality of Pakistani English as an independent variety by
identifying the lexical bundles or formulaic language patterns across the academic
register of Pakistani variety of English.

1.5 Objections on Prior Studies

The previous studies conducted on the language of learner’s

writings in Pakistani English have indicated the unique linguistic
characteristics (Shahkir, 2013; Ahmad & Mahmood, 2015; Zahida,
Mahmood & Mussarat, 2016; Urooj, Mahmood & Rasool, 2016;
Maimoona, 2018). All these studies have greatly focused on the co-
occurring linguistic features in Pakistani in the language of Pakistani
learners’ writings. But no studies, so far has investigated the lexical
bundles or formulaic language structures in the language Pakistani

12
learner’s writings which help in building the discourse structures in
Pakistani English learners’ writings.

1.6 Research Questions of the Study

The present study has developed research questions after

having studied previous studies. The theoretical framework leads
the current study to the research questions such as,

1) What kind of lexical bundles are found in Pakistani

learners’ writings?

2) How do these lexical bundles lead toward discourse

development in Pakistani English writing?

3) How the lexical bundles in Pakistani learners’ writings

are different from other registers of Pakistani English?

1.7 Objectives of the Study

After having proposed these research questions, under the

light of theoretical framework- the following research objectives
were designed. Such as,

a) To find out the lexical complexity in Pakistani English

Learners Academic Writing.

b) To find out the kinds of lexical bundles in Pakistani

English Learners Academic Writing.

c) To find out the linguistic variation of lexical bundles in

learners’ corpora.

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 d) To find out the roles of lexical bundles in the
development of discourse in Pakistani English Learners’
Academic Writing.

1.8Overview of the Study

The methodology taken up in this study is based on lexical bundles which are
categorized into methodology, the nature of corpus, data collection and pilot study.

1.8.1 Methodology

For the current study, a quantity approach is followed to

conduct this research. In order to use this approach, lexical bundles
in Pakistani English argumentative essays by Pakistani English
language learners have been studied. For this purpose, a data of an
argumentative essay was extracted from online source: ICNALE (as
described below).

1.8.2 The Nature of Corpus

The essays were argumentative in nature and two essays per

learner were collected on the topics of “It is important for college
students to have a part-time job” and “Smoking should be
completely banned at all the restaurants in the country”.

1.8.3 Collection of Data

A corpus of around 94523 words of learner essays was

extracted from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners
of English (ICNALE). Data was bifurcated into four population groups
owing to the objectives set by this research and PLC was extracted
from the ESL group for the purpose of comparison. The criteria for
sample selection involved language proficiency of the students,
therefore essays written by students of lower proficiency, as
determined by their TOEIC/TOEFL/VTS scores, were excluded. The

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essays were collected under controlled writing conditions regarding
topic, time, dictionary use, spell and grammar check, and essay
length.

1.9Organization of the Study

In this study, the first chapter inaugurates the major aspects of this research
which has a brief introduction of this whole research. There are seven sections
arranges as follows: background to the study, a preliminary definition of Lexical
bundles, a brief overview of prior studies, objections on prior studies, research
questions and the objectives of this study, the overview of the study and organization
of the study.

Chapter 2 will introduce literature review in terms of theoretical framework.

The chapter will display complete and detail overview of the following sections
through past studies such as language variation, world Englishes, Pakistani English,
previous register-based studies on Pakistani English, register variation, non-native
registers of Pakistani English, learners’ writing in Pakistani English, lexical bundles in
World Englishes, and lexical bundles in Pakistani English.

Chapter 3 will devise research methodology and its

organization in terms of sub-sections such as data collection,
instruments for data analysis and procedure of data analysis.

Chapter 4 will contain two parts. The first part will show
numerical results of lexical bundles explored in Pakistani learners’
writings. The second part will discuss and interpret the numerical
results qualitatively.

Chapter 5 will sum up and show the fulfillment of purpose of

the current study. This chapter will give recommendations and
suggestions for upcoming researchers and teachers. Finally, the last
part of this chapter will provide the limitation of the current study.

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 CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

It is an obvious reality that English language is treated as

international language. Almost in the whole world, the academic
information is delivered in it. Culture is demonstrated through it in
an effective way. Historical, geographical and some other reasons
are shaping the language and due to these reasons English has also
been influenced: “Language change is a regular feature of all the
living languages of the world and English is not an exception”
(Aitcheson, 1981, p. 4).

This chapter has introduced and classified theoretical framework through past
studies such as language variation, world Englishes, Pakistani English, previous
register-based studies on Pakistani English, register variation, non-native registers of
Pakistani English, learners’ writing in Pakistani English, lexical bundles in world
Englishes, and lexical bundles in Pakistani English.

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2.1 Language Variation

Language change and various accents of England were first

discussed by Trudgill (1991). It was highlighted by him that some
parts of concern diverted from lexical, historical and phonological
level towards syntactic level and no dialectologist paid heed towards
it. It was stated by him that “the further you travel, the more
different dialects will be found and the reason is that English, like all
other languages is changing and the change starts from a specific
area and spreads to neighboring areas” (Trudgil, 1991, p. 7).
Standard British English was observed and declared that it’s not a
language but simply it is the dialect of language, having the
different pronunciation.

Elaborating the Standard English, Trudgil illustrated that the

variety was differentiated by definite lexical and grammatical forms.
He claimed that “Standard English is a social dialect contrasted from
others by its higher status.” (Trudgil, 1991)

Non-native speakers of English are more than the native-

speakers of English all over the world. Hence, Crystal (1997)
calculated “Inner Circle 320-380 million, Outer Circle 150-300
million, Expanding Circle 100-1000 million” (p. 54). Others linguists
too studied this fact, Kachru (1996) explained it: “There are now at
least four non-native speakers of English for every native speaker”
(p. 241). The evolution of English varieties all over the world is due
to certain cultural, social and linguistics differences and these
varieties are termed as World Englishes.

2.2 World Englishes

This section is about World Englishes and how significant

researchers contributed in it. First of all, Kachru and Smith (2008)
studied on World Englishes and elaborated it. They presented the
idea of pluricentricity for the term world Englishes and dialects,

17
existing all over the world with varieties. The word Englishes
presents the formal variation and functional change of language as
well as the internal acculturation. Now the language not merely
belongs to its native speakers but it belongs to those as well who
are non-native.

By the travel of European traders in Australia, English

language also traveled with them in New Zealand, South Africa and
Australia and proved as back bone between traders and natives for
communication. This communication and interaction gave the
consequences in the form of mixing dialect. Thus, the varieties of
English got evolved in these countries. As a result, English dialects
were produced in these countries. Kachru (1992) formulated three-
circle model which classified World Englishes into three categories:
the inner circle that contained the Diaspora first English, the outer
circle consisting South Asian and African Englishes and the
expanding circle consisting Middle East countries.

In this relation, Kachru (1992) further explained that English

spoken in the inner circle was “norm providing”; and outer circle
language was “norm developing” and on the other hand expanding
circle was “norm-dependent”. Kachru termed these dialects or
verities as New Englishes by this model. From the ancestral home to
the different areas, New Englishes has expressed variance, as from
British variety. These verities mostly depend upon the discourse,
pronunciation, lexical and grammatical level.

In all variety’s variation is shown to some extent by World

Englishes. The first diaspora of English was consisted UK, Scotland
and Ireland. Variation was found at different level as In Irish and
Welsh languages, phonological variation was found. The study of
Scotland English also showed morphological and syntactic variation
in its usage. Diphthongs preference was found in Irish and Welsh
language. Past form of verb and past participles various changed

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forms were used in different options e.g., ending at–it, -d,-t. The
process in which native language influences the new variety of
language and adds some linguistic features in it is called
Nativization. Since 200 years English is present in the region and
results in Nativization of the language, which is evident and can be
observed in local varieties of English, referred to as South Asian
English. In IndE, new things can be observed as like “roti, finger
chips, full-boiled and half-boiled egg”, “hard-” and “soft-boiled
eggs”. Innovative compounds are exemplified by “driver-cum-
salesman, to airlift, to charge sheet, to turn turtle, etc.” Various
morphemes like “+wala: e.g. police wala” are quite often.
(Baumgardner, 1993, p. 46).

Syntactic, lexical, phonological, and discourse variation has

been observed by World Englishes of Philippine, Malaysia and
Singapore and these languages are used in communication in their
countries as second language. No specific features have been found
by the New Englishes of expanding circle as Indonesia, South Africa
and Vietnam. The reason behind is that almost total population of
Vietnam switched to English as foreign language and began to leave
the Dutch colonial language; Although, many prestigious varieties
were adopted by Thailand but the South Africa got maximum variety
of New Englishes. The New Englishes had been vast mixture of
native characteristics. Apartheid culture made prominent contrast
among the New Englishes. Hence the future of the World Englishes
depend that either it will be mixed with other native verities or not.
If society paradigm continues, the New Englishes users will have to
adopt as mother-tongue speakers have claimed it. “I would argue
that English as an international language is not distributed, as a set
of established encoded forms, unchanged into different domains of
use, but it is spread as a virtual language” (Widdowson, 1994, p.
379-80).

2.3 Pakistani English

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 English has become the “Lingua Franca” in Pakistan because it
has become the source of interaction between Pakistan and the
whole world. Its use is not limited or bounded to official works but it
is used everywhere in Sharia and Islamic affairs. Platt et al. (1984)
presented four essential levels to explain any variety as New
English. Firstly, he pointed that educational institutes prefer New
English. New English must be taught as the medium of instruction
rather than other native languages. Secondly, Pidgin or Creole
should have developed of New English with its native speakers.
Thirdly, most of departments of that country should use New
Language i.e. Legal department and Official correspondence, and
the Lingua Franca function must be under performance. Fourthly,
localization of expressions, intonation, and pronunciation should
exist. Thus, English in Pakistan fulfills all these four criteria’s and
takes the “New English” title. In the 19th century English language
came in the subcontinent and when there was lack of staff; English
started teaching this language to fulfill their staff deficiency.
Henceforth, it is being taught in the whole educational area as
mandatory part. Even though, choices have been changed as
English medium schools are preferred and schools have set their
syllabus in this language. A lot of research work has been done in
this non-native variety of Pakistani English. The approaches
presented by Karchru (1983) focused capabilities of complex
structures use in South Asian Englishes which burdened them in
diction. It emphasizes the interrogative sentences used mostly
without any change in lexical item subject or verb. Furthermore,
morph-syntactic features of South Asian Englishes were pointed by
this approach.

As Baumgardner (1983) analyzed the effect of Urdu language

upon the lexical level. The results of this detailed study declare that
Pakistani English uses borrowed words from regional and many
other languages. Words like “atta (flour), baradri (clan), goonda

20
(thug), kabbadi (a sport), kachiabaadi (shanty town), mela (fair),
paan, wadera (Sindi landlord)” are pointed that these are most
frequently used in Pakistani English (Baumgardner, 1993, p. 46). In
Pakistani English lexical level, prefixes and suffixes were found to be
helpful and productive and it was found by Baumgardian (1993)
approach: “Words in edibles have been concocted from Urdu and
quite frequently being used in Pakistani English” e.g., “Tandoori roti,
naans, pekoras, samosas, chapatti, dal, kebab, pulao, daal-chawal,
roast, charga, tikkas, aaloo-chola, siri-pae, nihari, chutney etc.” (p.
88-89). In addition to it moreover Baumgardner found this evident
fact that Pakistani wedding celebrations are mostly found using the
cultural word. These words are very certain and different to others,
i.e. like Shaadi, Dulha, Dulhan, Mayun, dholki, luddi, mehndi, baraat,
rukhsati, nikah, valima” (p. 90). In Pakistani publishing stuff Urdu’s
noun and adjective are utilized frequently.

Beside this, an approach given by Rahman (1990) elaborated

Pakistani English features like grammar, phonology and lexis.
Habitual and completed common actions in Pakistani English have
been discussed at syntactic and morphological level.

Pakistani English has been under research by many

researchers who tried their best to make it a fact that it is an
independent variety of English. Pakistani English form and functions
have been studied by Talaat (2002) who located the influence of
Urdu language upon this variety. She studied and analyzed the text
to look at phenomena of change in non-native language.
Comprehensively, she analyzed the text and observed the language
change phenomena. Finally, she investigated the language influence
as it is going on by Urdu on English.

Corpus based study of Empirical approach by Mahmood

(2009) and Mahmood (2009) towards investigating Pakistani English
being an independent variety has highlighted and explained non-

21
typical features of Pakistani English. This study described noun
phrase: Lexico-Grammatical aspects in Pakistani English. The
collocation, colligation and word-Grammar in Pakistani English were
compared to British and American corpus.

It was strengthened by Mahmood (2009) that previous

researches on different trends in Pakistani English were authentic.
Differences were studied critically and majority of exact quoted
examples by Talaat (2002), Baumgardner (1993) and Rahman
(1990). In addition to it further investigations continued on lexical
items, adverbs, verb-particles and verb-Complementation. A corpus-
based comparison held between 300 lexical words selected upon
gender and culture specific basis. Their pattern was noted and was
compared to Standard British English.

2.4 Previous Register-Based Studies on Pakistani

English

A number of studies have been conducted on Pakistani

registers. Firstly, the study conducted by Shakir (2013), who made
a study on advertising register and it belonged to Pakistani media.
In this study he studied Linguistics variation and different
approaches on external and internal comparisons. This research
highly stressed and focused on the variation of linguistics features
that there is an urgency to explore the Pakistani registers to identify
and differentiate Pakistani non-native English. This study ignored
the previous researches conducted due to their reliance on
frequency of individual linguistics features and these were based on
unrepresentative data. His research contained 137 Magazine and 37
Newspaper. He investigated that how Pakistani print media varied
with reference of source and product category on five textual
dimensions. These dimensions were presented by Biber (1988) and
new three dimensions are identified in the study. In his research it
was stated that Pakistani print advertisement advertisements

22
changed with reference to source and product category and
audience also played its important part. In addition to it his
research further innovated that print advertisements language in
Pakistani media seems to be like written discourse instead of face
to face conversations. This study has also described and explained
the other register i.e. press reportage media of Pakistani print
media on Biber’s (1988) as well as news textual dimensions
identified in the current study.

2.5 Register Variation

As quoted here, variation has been found in language in

different aspects: “variation associated with constraints in the
linguistic environment, variation associated with the social or
demographic characteristics of speakers, and variation associated
with situations of use” (Biber, 1995, p. 316). The study of register
elaborates the linguistics differences. Here is the basic concept
found in register variation:

A communication situation that recurs regularly in a

society (in terms of participants, setting,
communicative functions, and so forth) will tend to
develop identifying markers of language structure and
language use, different from the language of other
communication situations (Biber, 1994, p. 43).

The study of register and its analysis included three basic

features: the situational background, the linguistics features and the
relationship that is functional between situational background and
linguistic features. Registers have specific identity and features and
all these grammatical features are seen in the specific situational
context and all registers are discussed. These linguistics features in
registers exhibit functional content: “Linguistic features are always
functional when considered from a register perspective. That is,
linguistic features tend to occur in a register because they are

23
particularly well-suited to the purposes and situational context of
the register” (Biber & Conrad, 2009). Different context based
language is used in registers. It belongs to various circumstances
and situations. Thus register variation and differences are important
like sociolinguistics based studies in both regards: it describes the
patterns of language use in all spoken registers, and it describes
patterns of language use in terms of the full inventory of “Lexico-
grammatical characteristics” (Biber, 2009, p. 825)

2.6 Non-native registers of Pakistani English

As far as this research is concerned, it’s a multidimensional

research which is detailed and easily understandable in which all
inclusive approaches are selected towards the linguistics features as
variables from a lot of registers. In regard of linguistic variation,
different varieties as like Pakistani variety has been analyzed and
observed critically against textual dimension. Results of this analysis
show that Pakistani society has maximum ability to absorb register
base variation as compared to other varieties. In linguistic
dimensions, there are four such kinds of variations that are
specifically Pakistani and are new one. Discourse is concerned with
involved or informative goals as it is pointed by textual dimension
(Dimension 1), personal or objective evaluation is beard by the
speaker (Dimension 2), it is possible that the topic of discourse will
be past or present situations (Dimension 3), and lastly the discourse
may be controlled or unnatural with the real time production or it
may be possible that it is for different situation (Dimension 4).

In this regard, different reasons are there behind the process

of language change, in these the key reasons that play their
important role are history and
geogaphy: “Language change is a regular feature of all the living
languages of the world and English is not an exception” (Aitchison,
1981).

24
 Gradually as time proceeded, many changes happened in
English and it is prominent area of research and study from the
history. This is the vivid fact that English language has the status of
major international language. In education vast of subjects are
studied and their medium of instruction is English. Either its
Educational information or Business, tourism or communication;
English is the leading language. It represents the famous culture
and advertises it. Trudgill (1991) is the first one who studied and
find out the various dialects of England. He pointed out the truth
that certain part diverted and resulted in change of phonology,
syntax, historical level and lexeme and it was not focused by any
dialectologists.

There are no really sharp boundaries in England, and

dialects certainly do not coincide with countries. The
further you travel; the more different dialects will be
found. And the reason is that English, like all
other languages are changing and the change starts
from a specific area and spreads to neighboring
areas. (Trudgil, 1991, p. 8).

It was presented by Trudgill that Standard British was merely

the name of dialect and its considering as being a language were
not right. It was argued by him that Standard English was a certain
variety identified by distinct lexical and grammatical forms. It was
claimed as a social dialect and entirely different from any other
dialect of English in regard of its high prestige and honor. Evolution
and spread of English varieties all over the world have many
reasons of cultural and linguistic differences.

In 1963 English was declared as Foreign and Second language

by British and it was claimed by Marckwardt. English has been
taught to the learners as a mandatory school subject entirely for the
goal of giving the learners a foreign language comprehension which

25
he may use in different ways. English has become the medium of
instruction where it is used as second language for instance in
Philippines, or it becomes lingua franca between speakers of diverse
and large variety as it has become in India. (Marckwardt, 1963, p.
13-14).

2.6.1 Non-Native Englishes

From 1959, Kachru made discrimination in Indian Kashmir,

also utilized the Non-native English for India English and focused on
“bringing out the Indianness of the Indian uses of English, as
opposed to the Englishness of British English or the Americanness of
American English” (Kachru, 1966, p. 99).

2.6.1.1 The Characteristics of Non-Varieties

The process of making other suitable for local culture known

as indigenization of English occurs whenever it is used by a speaker
of another language. It’s the result of Weinreich, in a developing
study of language contact, calls ‘interference’. He defines if as
follows: The term interference implies the rearrangement of patterns
that result from the introduction of foreign elements into the more
highly structured domains of language, such as the bulk of the
phonemic system, a large part of the morphology and syntax, and
some areas of the vocabulary (Kinship, color, weather, etc.)
(Weinreich, 1953, p. 1).

2.6.2 Research on Pakistani English

In 1989 initially the first monograph was written and neither

the Pakistani English nor the sub varieties were mentioned. English
was discussed in detail and the while literature was in Indian
English. To PE there were reference, for example, Sri Lanka, Nepal,
Bangladesh and Pakistan are share with Indianness English. Thus,

26
Kachru refers Pakistani English as south Asian English. (1983) The
idea of south Asia as linguistic area is observed in other studies and
researches studies (Emeneau, 1955 & 1958; Masica, 1976), and
simply Indian English has been described and explained the
assumption that this description is authentic for Pakistani English
too. A German scholar also taken this methodology he explained
that features of South Asian English are same for Pakistan and India
although he does not give any authentic reference on PE and also,
he does not data from Pakistan (Leitner, 2012, p. 176-191). Finally,
there is an Indian English that Halliday mentioned as both Pakistani
and Indian English are understood to follow the British or American
model (Halliday et al., 1964, p. 173-174). It was reported that India,
Pakistan and several other countries use stable and authentic
varieties of English and this was mentioned by Quirk. Later on a
survey showed that in survey of progress it was said that a surveyor
was given the question to study the problems involved in teaching
English. In this team of survey, a Pakistani woman named as Anjum
Haque was also included. Pakistan was highlighted as in the list of
ESL countries along with Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, India and
Hong Kong (Campbell et al., 1983, p. 42).

Pakistan was mentioned (Bickley, 1982, p. 87). Later, in a

paper published by the researchers, Pakistan was included in the list
of ESL countries along with Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Philippines
and Singapore (Campbell et al., 1983, p. 42).

2.7 Learners’ Writing in Pakistani English

For production of language writing is important skill and tool.

But unfortunately, it has been considered difficult so far particularly
in English as a second language context in which students confront
many difficulties. Actually, many challenges are there in ESL for the
students as L1 influence and so on. The present study was
conducted with having a goal of knowing the resistances that lie in

27
front of English writing. For this thing, focus groups of Pakistani
English language teachers and undergraduate ESL learners were
conducted. To continue this, a sample 30 of ESL undergraduate
learners was collected so that the main problem in their writing may
be identified. The interviews and essays were critically seen and the
results expressed that mostly problems in Pakistani Undergraduate
ESL learners writing are due to insufficient comprehension and
competence. This incompetence includes Grammar, Syntax,
vocabulary, dependence on L1, writing anxiety and deficiency of
writing practice. These factors have been due to several reasons as
untrained teachers, ineffective teaching methods and lack of
reading practice, ineffective teaching methods, and deficiency of
writing practice. This study also suggests the increased reading,
conscious and incidental vocabulary teaching, writing practice,
writing competitions, and reforms in examination system. Thus,
these factors are mainly causing the lack of standard writing.

It is difficult task to produce text in any field by EFL learners

as, it demands comprehensive linguistic and communicative
capability. Gradually with the research in second language,
vocabulary importance has been elaborated. Although this paper
objective is to show that (a) how diction and expression in English
language of EFL writers academic writing is vital and obligatory. So
that learner may bring creativity and construct his own style for
quality text in various genres of social and medical sciences (b)
through error recognition and analysis and increase competence of
postgraduate studies (C) how it is necessary, the genre-based
writing lacks of English as foreign language novice writers,
explaining with example (d) and also it aims to describe the reasons
and suggestions. Data collection includes 40 introductions. From
these 20 are from Pakistani journals of medical science for error
analysis using 4 methods of lexico-grammatical EA.

28
 Performance in language leads to improvement in writing
skills and it was explained by Hyland (2003). Effective text of ESL
writing must be cohesive, interesting, logical, clearly structured and
organized in proper way with a range of vocabulary and mastery of
connections in mechanics (Jacobs, 1981; Hall, 1988). According to
David Nunan (1989) writing is entirely cognitive activity which
requires the learner to have grip over many factors and these
factors change from person to another due to background and
personal interest of the writer to various psychological, lingual and
cognitive phenomena (Dar & Khan, 2015; Haider, 2012).

Generally, the students of Pakistan are weak and lack

substandard in writing field of English. In fact, the users of English in
Pakistan have increased to 49% in 2003 from 2% in 1961 (Dar &
Khan, 2015). These speakers are until now confronting problems in
writing. Past studies have tried to classify these categories into
some broader domains for instance, teacher’s incompetence
(Haider, 2012; Mansoor, 2005; Harmer, 2008), students’ lack of
interest (Byrne, 1991; Harmer, 2008) methodological in-appropriacy
(Ahmad & Munir, 2013; Javed, Juan, & Nazli, 2013; Siddiqui, 2007).
Henceforth these is need of further research that could explore the
origin of these factors and their remaining transformation into
permanent writing problems of students written discourses. This
study is including both students and teachers. Perception explores
and investigates the student’s opinion and their texts to identify
their writing problems and the factors that produce these issues and
to give suggestions for the improvement of ESL learners writing
skills. For further study the cognitive factors and psychological
factors will be expressed.

As student writers are at different level, they face different

problems according to their level. Usually, student problems are
divided into linguistics, psychological, pedagogical and cognitive
categories (Haider, 2012; Hyland, 2003). They try their best to

29
overcome these issues by structural components as inadequate and
unauthentic structure complexes the comprehension of text. And
this is disciplined by the reader through involvement of a mental
process (Quintero, 2008; Nik, Hamzah, & Rafidee, 2010). As like it,
the text which is not coherent it cannot communicate the ideas in
an order due to lack of confidence in learners even if they have
mastered syntactic, grammatical and lexical grip over text
composition (Rico, 2014). Confidence lower is also due to improper
teaching strategies which do not confirm students learning style and
cultural backgrounds or customs (Ahmad et al., 2013).

Various things are there that affect students writing skills and
these have been identified in literature. These are linked with
motivation of learner who are usually ambiguous about the aim and
importance of their text in their L2 learning. As well as, lack of
analytical and evaluative approach, vast size of class, social media,
improper feedback from teachers, and negative influence of
structural accuracy of the student’s text (Pintech, 2013).

The writing skill of students can be improved if they are

enhanced in their motivation and their interest. For this purpose, we
can get the aid of technology to make the writing interesting
(Graham & Perin, 2007). To make the comprehension of writing
process, students must be practiced with affective strategies, meta-
cognitive and cognitive activities (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990).
Moreover, students can be given the liberty of their choice to choose
the topic according to their taste and this use of pedagogical
approaches is adapted by teachers (Pineteh, 2013; Quintero, 2008).
Their writing patterns will be reshaped by physical and cognitive
skills which give the writer control over the expression of linguistic
and specific knowledge (Kellogg & Raulerson, 2007). Moreover, it
will be easier for language and content teachers to control their
students from broad perspectives (Nik, Sani, & Kamaruzaman,
2010).

30
2.8 Lexical Bundles in World Englishes

World Englishes have been analyzed in detail by Kachru and

Smith (1985) and they explained the term world Englishes in detail.
With the formal variation that exists in English, Kachru has given the
idea of polycentricity and it lies behind the World Englishes. In any
language there may be changes that are actually world Englishes.
This is the variation that occurs formally and takes place in
language and its acculturation found in the following countries, i.e.
Philippines, West Indies, South Asia, South East in native English-
speaking countries as well as USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia and
Canada. Therefore, language lies in those countries grab it as first
language and those who use it as second language although it is
standard or localized form (Boltin, p. 241).

2.8.1 Lexical Bundles and Disciplinary Variation

In this paper disciplinary variation of students of university

writing is described and it is vivid in the application of frequent four-
word arrangement. As compared to previous studies, are not usually
included in the analysis of but they are appeared to form an initial
analysis of variation across all writers in the corpus. The change in
the degree of similarity and dissimilarity in the shape of visual
presentation is called variation. On the basis of distinct and
prominent disciplinary groups are used on the basis of qualitative
analysis of lexical bundles. Four basic Disciplinary grouping has
been expressed by analysis. A basic discrimination has been made
on the basis of soft and hard subjects. In the soft subject,
humanities and social sciences are included and in the hard
subject’s science and technology are enlisted. In science there is
further division of life sciences and commerce. To highlight these
classifications, a qualitative distinction is presented between hard
and soft categories.

31
 Restricting teaching to one are can make language more
manageable. This is the founding premise of English that discourses
are associated with homogenous ranges of language and text
(Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). The biggest difficulty for learners,
researchers and teachers of English for academic purpose is that
English text are found to be heterogeneous. The linguistic and
discourse related conventions of English are associated with
textbooks, lectures, student assignments, seminars, research papers
and text of singe genre can reveal the authentic variation between
different academic disciplines.

Between two disciplines variation has been the point of focus.

Between texts, research has stressed the disciplinary differences
between texts (e.g. Hyland, 2002; Tse, 2007). EAP teachers have
pointed out the differences specially the “needs” of student are
increasingly expected to arrange from disciplinary areas (De Chazal,
2003). Hence, authentic undrstanding of the nature of disciplinary
variation has been developed by practioners and researchers.

For differen purposes, disciplinary areas are recquired to

explain for different purposes and thus these have complicated the
task. Resources which are used selectively as the need of contexrt
are more important rather than disciplinary labels in academic’s life
(Pinch, 1990). For the purpose of research or detailed study different
and separate labels can be used as like research of Government
research evaluations , teaching, and socializing with colleagues of
other departments. So as like it, for the objective of cateogorizing
research cultures or teaching styles are not according to our
purpose of capturing the range of variation in students language
use.

During the duration of last 10 years, the approaches of

commonly used word combinations have become an important point
of academic discourse analysis and English for academic purposes

32
teaching. For the purpose of coherence in a text, specific contexts
and helping to shape the meaning collocations appear more
commonly referred to as bundles, chunks, and clusters. Recently,
work has been expanded to concgrams and non-contagious word
formation as here is words variation. In different genres these
produced novel patterns of lexemes are persuasive and are
important component of linguistics production. As far as this paper
is concerned it explains the research of formulaic language of
speech and writing. It also aims to explain the aspects of variation,
frequency, genre, discipline, function and form of academic text.

Some researchers have been focusing on academic bundles in

language as in Korean (Kim, 2009; Bulter, 1998; Cortes, 2008; Tracy-
Ventura, Cortes, & Biber. 2007). These researches have published
work on the languages but this is limited in English such as Chinese
(e.g., Ma, 2009; Wei, 2007; Xu, 2007). Many of the researches have
discussed the academic bundles in English and so this heading
focuses on English, discussing the newly appearing research which
shows the importance of this formulaic language.

Putting in nut shell, bundles explain merely collocation

patterns. Still, our institutions suggest that formulaic sequences are
importantly flexible and Biber (2009) observed various pattern in on
typically four-word pattern. Some software like Word-Smith Tools 5
(Scott, 2008) can generate high frequency phrases. For example, it
will produce phrases; it misses in sentences of same arrangement.
For instance, a visible or uncertain relationship was found between
them (Scott). In addition to fixed elements, some other sequences
are not mandatory and these remain hidden obviously. By
expressing the grouping of non-contagious word or concgrams
recent software developments seek guidance to control this
limitation (Cheng, 2007) “all of the permutations of constituency
variation and positional variation produced by the linking of two or
more words” (Cheng, Greaves, & Warren, 2006, p. 414). This is a

33
relatively a novel way of identifying and classifying word association
that has still to generate published studies of discourse.
Fundamental, searches of nonacademic corpus of spoken data has
found the mostly concgrams are composed of non-contagious
collocations, expressing both constituency (AB, ACD) and positional
(AB, BA) variations. There is clearly great potential here to illuminate
the formulaic patterning, especially phraseological variation, of
academic speech and writing.

This current study is based totally on corpus and its objective

is to make inventory of pedagogically beneficial lexical bundles in
prose of science; that can be used in many teaching applications.
This study is investigation of structure, frequency and function of
lexical bundle and published in scientific writing in English.

Three to six word bundles were retrieved from a Health

science Corpus of 1.3 million words sample for this study.
Furthermore, this corpus belonged to Biochemistry and Biology
articles. The fundamental list was filtered and promoted by the use
of Mutual Information (MI) statistics and for the pedagogical
objective of class, a new criteria was established. The keywords
have been used for the classification of lexical bundles as it
presented by SciE-Lex investigation (Verdaguer et al., 2009). Beside
it, the current study used the prototypical concept that is based on
Sinclairs (2004) notion of canonical units of meaning, so that it may
cope with the structural and semantic connections of the same
bundles. By concordance analysis, the structural and functional
characteristics of lexical bundles were explored. Thus it made
possible to classify the bundles using changed versions of Biber et
al. (1999) structural framework and Hyland’s (2008) functional
taxonomy.

The critical analysis showed that in what way native expert

writers employ current world strings in construction of a coherent,

34
well-structured and convincing scientific text that conforms to the
conventions of the genre. It showed the different functions that
lexical bundles play in scientific discourse and how these functions
make able the writers to adherence their research concern, elicit the
desired reaction from their target audience and achieve their
communication goals. They also express the special structural
realizations of these bundle functions and also the key aspects of
use that non-native writers need to be aware of incomplete
expressions in their own writing.

Moreover, this study has compared the results acquired from

the corpus of biomedical research articles written by native Spanish-
speaking scientists, who are completely non-native speakers. As
according to the approaches presented by Cortes (2004), the lexical
bundles were distinguished in the HSC were treated as target
bundles and finally looked for and analyzed in corpus nonnative
writing. Too much use of some certain features due to lack of
vocabulary and similarly due to bounded use of participant oriented
bundles which make clear that they have limited awareness or how
know of their particular functions.

The study also discussed the pedagogical implications of its

final product. That is a practical list of scientific English lexical
bundles for teaching usages and explains how six challenges of
lexical bundles in EAP classrooms and teaching materials as it was
given the idea by Byrd and Coxhead (2010).

Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) were the

pioneer who introduced the lexical bundles and their corpus based
study of English grammar as well. Lexical bundles have been
defined as “recurrent expressions, regardless of their idiomaticity,
and regardless of their structural status” (p. 990).

These bundles are characterized by empirical ways as these

are retrieved using computer based programmes by these related

35
combinations of words autonomously. Authors nominated the
frequent and usual patterns or sequences in conversation and
academic prose sections of the Longmen spoken and written English
corpus in regard of LGSWE. Chapter of LGSWE on lexical bundles is
prominent and is dependent majorly on frequency and multi word
units of meaning. But to some extent cuts-offs of frequency are
varying and rely on each study, work on lexical bundles has cut off
ranges between ten and forty instances per million words. Low cut
off have been used for unusual five and six word lexical bundles but
Biber (1999) minimum cut off at least ten times per million words.

Secondly other condition that is mandatory for a lexical order

to classify a lexical bundle is dispersion that it must be in different
texts with same register or situational use of language. The said
parameter seems important as it hinders individual writer or
speaker idiosyncrasies. Biber et al. (1999) lexical bundles are
scatters in minimum five different texts in each register but the
minimum dispersion can change across study. Different studies on
lexical bundles have shown that if the bundle is longer than the
frequency will be low (Hyland, 2008a; Simpson-Vlach, & Ellis, 2010).
There are approximately ten times as many three world lexical
bundles as four word lexical bundles in both the conversation and
academic-prose sections of the LSWE.

Four-word bundles occur over 8,500 times per million words in

conversation and over 5,000 times per million words in academic
prose (Biber et al., 1999). And three-word bundles occur over 80,000
times per million words in conversation and over 60,000 times per
million words in academic prose.

Lexical bundles enlist fixedness among its distinguishing

characteristics. As pointed out by Cortes (2004) that fixedness is an
outcome of the frequency criteria applied during the process of
bundle extraction. So it is different from fixedness that symbolizes

36
different word combination. In the present study, for example, only
the bundle are shown as occurs frequently enough to be considered
a lexical bundle, not its singular form is expressed.

The diversity of lexical bundle is too much and are different

idioms other in enviable non compositional phraseological items.
Many of the lexical bundles meaning are devisable from their words
and thus they are non-idiomatic. For example, in the presence of,
studies have shown that and the result of, just some of the most
frequent lexical bundles found in this study, all of which are fully
compositional.

Lexical bundles in this concern are not complete in structure

but are in parts of phrases or clauses with other parts consisting
with them. Biber et al. (1999) investigated that merely 15 % of
lexical bundles in conversation and 5% in academic prose represent
entire structural units and most lexical bundles bridge two units,
that is, the last word of the bundle is usually the first element of the
following structure.

However, Biber et al. (1999) also observe that lexical bundles

have strong structural correlates that make it possible to classify
them according to several basic structural types. These grammatical
correlates differ considerably depending on the register: bundles in
conversation are most commonly clausal, of the type pronoun +
verb + complement (e.g., I want you to, it’s going to be), while in
academic prose, most lexical bundles are phrasal, parts of noun
phrases or prepositional phrases (e.g., as a result of, on the other
hand) (Biber et al., 1999). These authors propose a structural
classification for lexical bundles based on these typical grammatical
correlates.

Beside it, simple and shorter lexical bundles are generally

mixed with complex and longer sentences. For instance, the four
word bundle it should be noted forms part of the five-word bundle it

37
should be noted that, which is in turn incorporated into the six-word
bundle it should be noted that the. Hence in this way smaller
bundles take part in the construction of new large sentences.

Various studies have tried to classify the lexical bundles

according to their function as whatever function they can have.
Biber and Cortes (2003 & 2004) have given the taxonomy that
reflects the meaning and purposes of lexical bundles in text which
distinguishes three primary functions. 1) Stance expressions, 2)
discourse organizers and 3) referential expressions. They provide
the following definition of each category (Biber et al., 2004):

Some different propositions are assessed by stance

bundles which express the attitude as well. Discourse
organizers show the relationship between the
previous and coming discourse as discourses are
interconnected with each other. Direct references are
made by referential discourse and point towards any
abstract substance or to the textual context itself for
the sake of identifying the abstract thing or to
differentiate some particular attributes (p.384)

By other authors the basic structure was vastly selected and

expanded as, specifically by Hyland (2008). In a too extended
corpus of research articles, lexical bundles, frequencies and forms
function were founded by him in master’s thesis and doctoral
dissertations from four separate disciplines. For classification, Biber
et al, (2004) has been modified to bitterly present the lexical
function. The resulting taxonomy assigns each bundle categories of
research from the given three categories. It is evident that lexical
bundles as “a fundamentally different kind of linguistic construct
from productive grammatical constructions” (Biber et al., 2004, p.
399). Similarly, it has influenced on the research discipline as like in
meaning and has since long used to find textual order and

38
differences between register, text types and native, and non-native
output. (Römer, 2009)

1.8.2 Lexical Bundles in Academic Writing

In the first study of comparisons of lexical bundles have given

the context in which recurrent language is used, not only it concern
with academic prose but also it exists in the academic prose in aby
Biber and his colleagues (1999).

For instance, Biber et al. (1999) found probably no lexical

bundles representing complete structural units in the academic
section of their corpus. Noun phrase and prepositional phrase are
distinguished in academic prose and a lot of these thus end in
function word, such as an article or position (e.g., the end of the, as a
result of). Without these, most lexical bundles in academic prose,
consists of nominal or prepositional elements that occur commonly
as like (of the). If there is empty slot in the frame can be filled by
many words or phrases. (i.e. the end of the, as a result of). In this
way by filling empty slot we can have new patterns or words
sequence. This research has further given solid proof of the main role
of fixed phrases in this type of discourse. In the academic
environment, for the purpose of fluent language production frequent
and proper lexical usage is necessary. And helps to shape meaning in
specific context and takes part in our sense of coherence in a text
(Hyland, 2008a, p. 4).

In EAP several corpus studies have sought to identify the

utmost important lexical bundles in academic setting and according
to text that usually differs by genre, register and discipline. Biber
(2006) for instance found a much higher density of lexical bundles in
classroom teaching and get comparison of it with spoken or
textbook. He said that results of classroom are reliance on oral or
written textbook. The past studies similarly strive to describe the

39
phraseological features that characterize particular discourse types
(Biber et al., 2004; Pickering & Byrd, 2008; Stubbs & Barth, 2003).

In articles, Hyland (2008) research glimpses that doctoral and

master thesis found variation in their frequencies and preferred uses
in the diverse studies. The result of his investigation led to question
of core academic phrasal lexicon and call for discipline specific
approach to the teaching of lexical bundles. Hyland’s conclusion is
compared to Simpson-Vlach and Ellis who used and “innovative
combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria, corpus statistics
and linguistics analysis, psycholinguistics processing metrics and
instructor insight” to make an empirical based pedagogical useful list
of formulaic order. These authors were able to characterize usually
recurring word arrangement that covered a range of academic
genres in the process of building AFL.

Other researches and studies objective was to improve the

comprehension of lexical bundles in academic discourse by
comparing the use of bundles by writers who have their different
native L1 languages. Target bundles were first initially analyzed by
the Cortes (2004) and he also analyzed the forms and functions of
four word lexical bundles in biology, history and other articles and he
investigated that what is the use of them in the written text b/y
students of different levels in the same discipline. Her results
claimed that students scarily used target bundles in their writing and
as compared to these there were students who used it in different
ways thus they were employed in profession of text. In addition to
the novice-writer effect, Chen and Baker (2010) explored the
influence of non-nativeness in lexical bundle use in their comparative
investigation of published academic texts and L1 and L2 student
writing. They found a small range of lexical bundles in L2 student
texts in comparison to published academic texts, as well as instances
of overuse and underuse of certain expressions in both L1 and L2
student writing.

40
 Salazar found that lexical bundles in different varieties of
English form two corpora of medical and research articles through an
analysis of lexical bundles with verbs extracted from two corpora of
medieval and research articles. One with texts from a Philippine
English-language journal and another from the British Medical Journal
were compared. Her quantitative results showed a lower amount of
verbal lexical bundles in the Philippine corpus compared to the
British, while her qualitative findings uncovered certain structural
and functional differences between the bundles used in the two
corpora.

1.8.3 Lexical bundles and EAP pedagogy

Lexical bundle research accepts the pedagogical importance of

reappearing word combinations generally; also several researches
seek not only to explore the theoretical aspect of lexical bundles but
also to present specific proposals for teaching. For example Simpson-
Vlach and Ellis’ (2010) research on the AFL was conducted keeping in
view to help include formulas into EAP curricula. Studies like
Hyland(2008) and Cortes’ (2004) descriptive and comparative
studies arrive to a conclusion which implies the design and
implementation of consciousness-raising tasks and productive
exercises which are encouraging for learners to focus on multiword
units in their reading activities and use these into their writing
activities.

When Cortes (2006) planned and taught a series of micro-

lessons on lexical bundles to a group of university students in
writing-intensive history class she took her investigation directly to
the classroom and on the student’s assignments, conducted pre- and
post-instruction analyses. The need for longer and better exposure to
lexical bundles in a corpus-enhanced disciplinary writing course was
suggested by the author because of the students’ limited progress in
lexical bundles even after the micro-lessons. A small set of lexical

41
bundles in academic lectures were focused by Neely and Cortes
(2009); on which their design of a series of academic listening lesson
plans were based. Through the analysis of a corpus of academic
writing and the comparing the results to published results of similar
data Byrd and Coxhead (2010) made their own list of 21 four-word
lexical bundles used in arts. They identified six main challenges in
taking lexical data into the EAP classroom through this investigation.
Among these problems the first is how lists of lexical bundles found
in the reports of research can be used as a basis for selecting multi-
word units for learning and teaching. One more hurdle is deciding the
length of lexical bundle to teach in those cases where bundles form
some part of longer ones. Furthermore the inadequate contextual
information that current lists of lexical bundles provide are also
included in the additional challenges and lack validity of these items
for EAP students. Despite the contradiction between an analytical
teaching approach and the use of bundles as unanalyzed chunks,
and students’ limited exposure to authentic examples of lexical
bundles in use, given the logistic constraints of the EAP classroom
the authors comment on the challenge of teaching lexical bundles.
These challenges and the possible solutions for them will be
explained on in Chapter 7. In this portion the literature outlined
leaves somewhat uncertainty that frequently recurring lexical
sequences are common features of academic language and their
mastery is important to fluent and idiomatic production. The
research summarized here provides justification for investigating
these sequences, operationally defined as lexical bundles, with a
view to creating a list of bundles that can be used to guide principles
and decisions for EAP pedagogy.

42
 CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter deals the following sections organized for depicting the research
framework clearly. The following sections are as follows: design of the study,
research model for the study, corpus collection, nature of the corpus, corpus selection

43
criteria, sources of corpus collection, corpus retrieval, size of corpus, tools for the
study, development of formulaic patterns of lexical bundles, and procedure of data
analysis.

3.1 Design of the Study

The present study studied phrasal complexity in form of lexical bundles at two
different levels. The former level dealt the structural analysis of lexical bundles at 4-
word levels following the model: lexical categories as proposed by Biber (2006). This
part of analysis was quantitative. The reason behind this analysis was proposing the
formulaic patterns of each lexical category. At later level, the current study made a
functional analysis of the explored formulaic patterns through the selected examples
from the data. For functional analysis, this study also attempted to apply the
functional categories proposed by Biber et al. (2004). This part of analysis was known
as qualitative in nature.

3.2 Research Model for the Study

As far as research paradigm is concerned, the current study considered two

different model for structural and functional analyses. For structural analysis of
lexical bundles, this study used a model on lexical categories as proposed by Biber
(2006). The formulaic language patterns are categorized by Biber
(1999) into eight different elements such as “Noun Phrase + of,
other noun phrases, prepositional phrase + of, other prepositional
phrases, passive + prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adj,
be + noun/adj phrase, and others”. The said model has been presented below
in table 3.1.

Table 3.1

Phrasal categorizations with Varieties of 4-word bundles as Proposed by Biber

(2006)

Phrasal Categories Examples

Noun Phrase + of the health of a, a part of our, the burden of their, the

44
 idea of acquiring, the brain of one, the expenses of
now, a part of this
a disturbance in your, an asset in today, a fashion in
Other Noun Phrases our, a burden on the, the message to everyone, a part
from these
Prepositional Phrase + of with the passage of, for human health in
in both in studies, at public places the, in present age
Other Prepositional Phrases
mostly
am found of smoking, are found of study, can get rid
Passive + Prep Phrase
of, may be discouraging to
it is caused due, it is taken in, it was declared that, it
Anticipatory it + verb/adj
is recreational supportive, it is good thing
is a kind of, is a fact that, is a place where, is a
Be + noun/adjectival phrase
country full, is a job done
Others may be discouraging to

On the other hand, for functional analysis of the lexical bundles in form of 4-
word level phrases used the model on functional categories as proposed by Biber et al.
(2004, p. 386-388). The said model on functional categories has been given below.

Table 3.2

Functional Categories of Lexical Bundles Proposed by Biber et al.

(2004, p. 386-388)

Sr. Functional
Sub-categories
No. Categories
1 Stance Epistemic Stance
Attitudinal/Modality Stance Desire
Obligation/Directives
Intention/ Prediction

45
 Ability
Introduction
Topic
Discourse elaboration/Prediction
2 Imprecision
Organizers quantity
Specification of Attributes Tangible framing
Intangible framing
Referential Place reference
3 Time Reference
Bundles Time/Place/Text References Text-Reference
Multi-functional reference

3.3 Corpus Collection

For the current study, the corpus of an argumentative essays

from Pakistani learners was built. The size of corpus was about 400
argumentative essays retrieved from online source: ICNAIL. The
word limit of the corpus was 94,523 tokens. The following sections
are categorized into: nature of the corpus, corpus selection criteria,
sources of corpus collection, corpus retrieval, size of corpus, tools
for the study, development of formulaic patterns of lexical bundles
and procedure of data analysis.

3.3.1 Nature of the Corpus

Lexical bundles of academic writings by Pakistani English

language learners have been studied. The academic writings in form
an essays were argumentative in nature and two essays per learner
were collected on the topics of “It is important for college students
to have a part-time job” and “Smoking should be completely banned
at all the restaurants in the country”.

3.3.2 Corpus Selection Criteria

The criteria for sample selection involved language proficiency

of the students, therefore essays written by students of lower
proficiency, as determined by their TOEIC/TOEFL/VTS scores, were
excluded. The essays were collected under controlled writing
conditions regarding topic, time, dictionary use, spell and grammar
check, and essay length.

46
3.3.3 Sources of Corpus Collection

This, being a corpus-based study collected Pakistani Academic

Learners’ writings using online source. For this purpose, a data of an
argumentative essay was extracted by online source: ICNALE.

3.3.4 Corpus Retrieval

In order to collect data, the following steps were made in which the data of
400 learners’ argumentative essays was derived from ICNAIL. Secondly, the data was
unlocked by providing key. Thirdly, all retrieved essays were tagged through
Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT). Fourthly, the tagged data through MAT
was processed into AntConc.3.4.4.0 (a word processor).

3.3.5 Size of Corpus

A corpus of around 94523 words of learner essays was

extracted from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners
of English (ICNALE). Data was bifurcated into four population groups
owing to the objectives set by this research and PLC was extracted
from the ESL group for the purpose of comparison.

3.3.6 Tools for the Study

In this study, the following instruments were used to analyze data such as
AntConc.3.4.4.0, and Multidimensional Analysis tagger (MAT). Further, this study
attempted to apply two different models on lexical bundles. The former model was
about the structural analysis and the latter model was about functional categories of
lexical bundles as proposed by Biber (2006; 2004).

3.3.7 Development of Formulaic Patterns of Lexical Bundles

While analyzing the data, using phrasal categories the current study proposed
different formulaic patterns in terms of phrases to see its complexity in Pakistani
Academic Learners’ writing. The proposed formulas were identified from the data and
all these formulas’ instances were exemplified in the section of data analysis.

Table 3.3

Phrasal categorizations with Varieties of 4-word bundles

47
 Phrasal
4-Word Phrase Bundles Examples
Categories
*_dt *_nn of_* *_dt the health of a
*_dt *_nn of_* *_nn the smoke of cigarette
*_dt *_nn of_* *_fpp a part of our
*_dt *_nn of_* *_quan the cause of many
*_dt *_nn of_* *_tpp the burden of their
*_dt *_nn of_* *_jj the students of higher
*_dt *_nn of_* *_vbg the idea of acquiring
*_dt *_nn of_* *_demo a part of this
Noun Phrase + of *_dt *_nn of_* *_nomz the cost of education
*_dt *_nn of_* *_qupr the health of anybody
*_dt *_nn of_* *_ger the habit of smoking
*_dt *_nn of_* *_rb a person of well
*_dt *_nn of_* *_spp the burden of your
*_dt *_nn of_* *_amp the death of very
*_dt *_nn of_* *_time the expenses of now
*_dt *_nn of_* *_pit a victim of it
*_dt *_nn of_* *_cd the brain of one
*_pin *_NN *_pin *_dt at death of the
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_dt a burden on the
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_nn the smoke of cigarette
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_FPP a fashion in our
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_quan the cause of many
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_tpp the burden of their
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_jj the health of human
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_vbg the idea of acquiring
Other Noun *_dt *_nn *_pin *_demo a part from these
Phrases *_dt *_nn *_pin *_nomz the cost of education
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_qupr the health of anybody
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_ger the habit of smoking
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_rb the message to everyone
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_spp a disturbance in your
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_amp the death of very
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_time an asset in today
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_pit a victim of it
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_cd the brain of one
Prepositional *_pin *_dt *_nn *_pin with the passage of
Phrase + of *_pin *_jj *_nn *_pin for human health in
Other Prepositional *_pin *_dt *_pin *_nn in both in studies
*_pin *_jj *_nn *_dt at public places the
Phrases *_pin *_jj *_nn *_rb in present age mostly
Passive + Prep *_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_ger am found of smoking

48
 *_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_nn are found of study
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_jj are thought to modern
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_dt are seen in the
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_vbn *_pin are seen involved in
*_POMD *_VB* * * *_pin can get rid of
Phrase
*_POMD be_VB* * *_pin *_demo can be for this
*_POMD be_VB *_vbg *_pin may be discouraging to
*_POMD be_VB* *_VB *_pin may be get into
*_POMD be_VB* * *_pin *_dt can be with the
*_POMD be_VB* *_nn *_pin may be causes of
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_jj it is caused due
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_pin it is taken in
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_to it is done to
it_pit was_vbd * *_vbn * *_thvc it was declared that
Anticipatory it +
it_pit was_vbd * *_vbn *_pin it was used for
verb/adj it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_nn it is good thing
it is recreational
it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_jj
supportive
it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_rb it is bad enough
*_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_pin is a kind of
Be + is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_demo is a fact that
noun/adjectival is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_rb is a place where
phrase is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_jj is a country full
is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_vbn is a job done
Others *_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_rb may be discouraging to

3.3.8 Procedure of Data Analysis

For the purpose of data analysis, the current study followed some steps: first of
all, the corpus of Pakistani academic writing was developed. Secondly, all collected
essays as academic writing were tagged through Multidimensional Analysis Tagger
(MAT). Thirdly, a model on structural categories of lexical bundles by Biber (2006)
was selected for proposing formulaic patterns. Next, each category of the model was
proposed through the explored formulaic patterns in form of lexical bundles as
phrases. Then, the frequencies of the patterns were noted. Further, the most frequent
patterns were considered for functional analysis. Furthermore, the most frequent
patterns were interpreted taking examples from the original texts.

49
 CHAPTER 4

RESULTS AND DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter deals two sections in which results and data

analysis have been elaborated in detail manners. This chapter has
shown formulaic patterns in Pakistani Academic Learners’
Argumentative Essays. The former section deals the numerical
results and structural formulaic patterns explored in Pakistani
Academic Learners’ Argumentative essays. The latter section deals
functional analysis of explored formulaic patterns. The analysis has
been made to explore the varieties of lexical bundles in terms of
frequencies and functions of 4-word bundles.

4.1 Results

This section has dealt lexical bundle patterns explored in

Pakistani leaner academic writing: Argumentative essays. In this
section, the current study has practiced Biber’s (1999) model on 4-
word bundles in learners’ essay writing. In order to conduct both
structural and functional analyses, the former analysis has been
made to explore different varieties of formulaic patterns in terms of
frequency of type and token bundles. In order to make “Noun Phrase
+ of” explicit, 17 formulaic patterns have been devised. Similarly,
the rest of phrasal categorizations have been formulated in different
formulaic patterns of 4-word bundles. The detail of phrasal
categorizations with their formulaic patterns has been given below.

50
Table 4.1

Formulaic Patterns in Pakistani Leaners Argumentative Essays

Phrasal Categories 4- Word Phrase Bundles Types Token

*_dt *_nn of_* *_dt 97 133
*_dt *_nn of_* *_nn 16 20
*_dt *_nn of_* *_FPP 16 20
*_dt *_nn of_* *_quan 21 26
*_dt *_nn of_* *_tpp 43 77
*_dt *_nn of_* *_jj 64 71
*_dt *_nn of_* *_vbg 23 25
*_dt *_nn of_* *_demo 16 16
Noun Phrase+of *_dt *_nn of_* *_nomz 41 51
*_dt *_nn of_* *_qupr 4 4
*_dt *_nn of_* *_ger 42 71
*_dt *_nn of_* *_rb 3 3
*_dt *_nn of_* *_spp 3 3
*_dt *_nn of_* *_amp 2 2
*_dt *_nn of_* *_time 2 2
*_dt *_nn of_* *_pit 4 4
*_dt *_nn of_* *_cd 5 5
Total 402 533
Other Noun Phrases *_pin *_NN *_pin *_dt 34 34
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_dt 152 193
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_nn 327 413
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_FPP 24 31
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_quan 38 43
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_tpp 80 112
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_jj 97 107
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_vbg 36 78
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_demo 31 32
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_nomz 47 57
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_qupr 5 5

51
 *_dt *_nn *_pin *_ger 46 76
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_rb 3 3
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_spp 5 5
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_amp 2 2
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_time 3 3
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_pit 6 6
*_dt *_nn *_pin *_cd 5 5
Total 941 1205
*_pin *_dt *_nn *_pin 220 324
prepositional phrase + of
*_pin *_jj *_nn *_pin 78 82
Total 298 406
*_pin *_dt *_pin *_nn 1 1
other prepositional phrases *_pin *_jj *_nn *_dt 25 26
*_pin *_jj *_nn *_rb 45 46
Total 71 73
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_ger 3 3
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_nn 1 1
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_jj 1 1
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_pin *_dt 1 1
*_VPRT [pass] *_vbn [priv] *_vbn *_pin 1 1
Passive + prep phrase *_POMD *_VB* * * *_pin 48 55
*_POMD be_VB* * *_pin *_demo 2 2
*_POMD be_VB *_vbg *_pin 3 6
*_POMD be_VB* *_VB *_pin 1 1
*_POMD be_VB* * *_pin *_dt 2 2
*_POMD be_VB* *_nn *_pin 1 1
Total 64 74
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_jj 2 2
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_pin 13 16
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_to 2 1
it_pit is_vprt * *_vbn *_* 27 31
Anticipatory it + verb/adj it_pit was_vbd * *_vbn * *_thvc 2 2
it_pit was_vbd * *_vbn *_pin 1 1
it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_nn 16 17
it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_jj 1 1
it_pit *_vprt * *_jj *_rb 4 4
Total 68 75
*_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_pin 91 114
is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_demo 6 6
be + noun/adjectival phrase is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_rb 3 6
is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_jj 2 2
is_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_vbn 2 2
Total 104 130
Others *_vprt * *_dt *_nn *_rb 7 14
Total 7 14

In table 4.2, the current study found the occurrences of

phrasal categorizations in Pakistani academic learners’

52
 argumentative essays in terms of type and token word-bundles. As
far as the type of bundles are concerned, Pakistani academic
learners’ essay used 20.6% noun phrase + of, 48.13% other noun
phrase, 15.25% prepositional phrase + of, 3.63% other prepositional
phrases, 3.27% passive + prepositional phrase, 3.47% anticipatory
“it” +verb/Adjective, 5.32% BE + noun/adjectival phrase, and 0.36%
other phrases. Overall, Pakistani academic learners’ argumentative
essays used more varieties of “other noun phrases” bundles. The
second more frequent type of phrases “noun phrase + of” was
noted in the data.

Similarly, the total frequency of phrasal categorizations has

been observed in terms of token word bundles. Pakistani learners’
argumentative essays used approximately 2510 word bundles. Out
of the total, the most frequent type of “other noun phrases” was
used 48.01% in Pakistani learners’ argumentative essays. The detail
of the following has been given below.

Table 4.2

Numerical Results of Type and Token 4-word Bundles in

Argumentative Essays

Sr. Type Token

Phrasal Categories % age % age
No. Bundles Bundles
1 Noun Phrase + of 402 20.56265985 533 21.2351
2 Other Noun Phrases 941 48.13299233 1205 48.008
3 Prepositional phrase + of 298 15.24296675 406 16.1753
4 Other Prepositional Phrases 71 3.631713555 73 2.90837
5 Passive + prep phrase 64 3.273657289 74 2.94821
6 Anticipatory it + verb/Adj 68 3.47826087 75 2.98805
7 be + noun/adjectival phrase 104 5.319693095 130 5.17928

53
8 Others 7 0.358056266 14 0.55777
Total 1955 100 2510 100

This study has compared numerical results with other genre of

Pakistani Academic Writing of Doctoral Thesis results as explored by
Mareena Anjum (2019). The graphical view has been given below.

Graph 2:

Frequency of Lexical Bundles in Pakistani Learners Academic

Writing

54
 Lexical Bundles in Pakistani Learners Academic Writing
1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0
of of j rs
es es s e
Ad s e
+
ra
s + as ra b/ ra he
se Ph se Phr ph ve
r ph Ot
ra hr
a l ep
l
Ph n a + va
u p
on pr it t
un r No n al it +
o ry j ec
No he o s i ve at /a
d
Ot it po ss ci
p
un
os Pr
e Pa t
ep r An no
Pr he +
Ot be

Type Bundl es Token Bundl es

In this graph, it is shown that the findings of the study are

presented in form word types and word tokens. Out of the results,

the Pakistani academic writing included more other noun phrases as

compared to other phrasal categories (i.e. noun phrase + of,

prepositional phrase +of, other prepositional phrase, passive +

prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adjective, be +

noun/adjectival phrase, and others). Moreover, in these results the

Pakistani learners’ excessively employed noun phrases to create

content complexity through lexical bundles. On the other hand, the

other categories of the phrases were used infrequently. This study

has inferred through results that Pakistani learners incorporated

55
 lexical bundles in form phrasal categories to communicate their

stance.

On the other hand, the purpose of study was comparing

results between doctoral theses’ lexical bundles by Anjum (2019)

and the results of the current study. The detail of results has been

given below.

Table 4.3

Comparison of Pakistani Doctoral Theses with Pakistani

Argumentative Essays

Learners
Doctoral Theses
Essay
Sr.
Phrasal Categories
No.
Social Applied Natural
Totals Totals
Sciences Sciences Sciences

1 Noun phrase + of 23.3 8.9 5.7 37.9% 21.2351%

2 Other noun phrases 9.2 8.8 5.7 23.7% 48.008%

3 Prepositional phrase + of 10.8 7.8 4.8 23.4% 16.1753%

4 other prepositional phrase 24.6 9.3 7.3 41.2% 2.90837%

5 Passive + prepositional phrase 6.4 6.1 2.3 14.8% 2.94821%

6 anticipatory it structure 6.5 1.9 0.6 9% 2.98805%

7 Be + Noun/Adj Phrase 1.6 1 0.1 2.7% 5.17928%

8 Others 0.8 3.3 1 5.1% 0.55777%

56
 The comparison between learners’ essays and doctoral theses
(Anjum, 2019) by Pakistani learners was presented below in graph 2.

Graph 2:

Comparison Between Pakistani Academic Doctoral Theses and

Learners’ Essays

Graphical Representation of Comparison of Pakistani Doctoral Theses with Pakistani Argumentative Essays
60

50

40

30

20

10

Doctoral Theses Learners' Essays

In table 3.4 both academic writing genres such as learners’

essays and doctoral theses of Pakistani learners contained 4-word
level lexical bundles but with different proportion. As per Biber’s
(1999) model, Pakistani academic learners’ argumentative essays
used less 4-word noun phrase bundles 21.23% than Pakistani
Academic Doctoral Theses 37.9%. On the other hand, Pakistani

57
learners used “other noun phrases” in essays 48.01% more than
Pakistani doctoral theses writing 23.7%. In case of Prepositional
phrase + of, Pakistani learners in Doctoral theses used more 23.4%
bundles than Pakistani learners’ essays 16.18%. Moreover, the
following phrasal categorizations (i.e. Other prepositional phrase,
passive + prepositional phase, and anticipatory it structure) were
more found in Pakistani doctoral theses 41.2%, 14.8% and 9% than
Pakistani learners in their argumentative essays 2.91%, 2.9% and
3% respectively. In case of BE + Noun/Adjective phrase, Pakistani
learners’ essays used 5.2% more bundles than Pakistani doctoral
theses 2.7%. Lastly, “Other BE + noun/adjective phrase” in Pakistani
doctoral theses were seen 5.1% more than Pakistani learners’
essays 0.6%. Further, a comparison between Pakistani Academic
Doctoral Theses and Pakistani Academic Argumentative essays has
been made in the form of frequencies and percentages of phrasal
categorizations, and the detail of their comparison has been given
below.

Table 4.4

Comparison of Numerical Results between Pakistani Doctoral Thesis

and Pakistani Argumentative Essays

Acade Type % age Token % age

mic Genres Bundles of bundles Bundles of bundles

Learner
1955 76 2510 15.8
s Essay

Doctoral
613 24 13278 84.2
Thesis

Accum 266
100 % 15888 100 %
ulated 8

In table 4.4, both different genres: doctoral theses and

learners’ essays have been compared in accordance with type and
token 4-word bundles. Seeing the results, both genres of Pakistani

58
academic writings used lexical bundles differently and
proportionately. The results of this study were compared with the
results of study executed by Mareen Anjum (2019). Pakistani
academic learners’ essays used more varieties of bundles 1955 than
613 word bundles by Pakistan academic doctoral theses. On the
other hand, Pakistani academic doctoral theses used more varieties
of bundles 2510 than 13278 word bundles by Pakistan academic
learners’ essays. The graphical representation of the following
results has been given below.

Graph 3:

Comparison of Lexical Bundles Between Pakistani Academic

Doctoral These (Anjum, 2019) and Pakistani Learners’ Essays

Comparison of Numerical Results Between Doctoral Theses and Learners' Essays

14000

12000

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
Learners' Essays Doctoral Theses

Type Bundles Token Bundles

4.2. Data Analysis

59
 This section has discussed the varieties of formulaic patterns
with most frequent instances as explored in Pakistani learners’
corpora. Side by side, this study has made functional analysis of the
explored 4-word bundles in Pakistani learners’ corpora. The most
frequent bundles for showing an indicator of learners’ writing have
been chosen. While analyzing data, the most significant thing is
noted that Pakistani learners’ essays used more variety of lexical
bundles but the learners used more than half bundles once in their
writings. They do not repeat these bundles again and again in their
writings. The detail of most frequent 4-word bundles explored in the current study
has been presented below.

Table 4.5

The Frequency of 4-word bundles in Pakistani Academic Learners’

corpora

Frequenc Frequenc
4-word phrase bundles 4-word phrase bundles
y y
the smoke of cigarette 20 the need of the 3
with the passage of 15 is a type of 3
the passage of time 14 is the duty of 3
for the sake of 12 is the need of 3
the habit of smoking 10 is the type of 3
with the help of 10 are the cause of 2
the habit of smoking 10 are the future of 2
the burden of theirtpp 9 is a fact of 2
the burden of their 9 is a form of 2
for the health of 9 is a place for 2
in the form of 6 is a source of 2
the health of a 5 is the age of 2
the progress of the 5 is the cause of 2
the smoke of the 5 is the causes of 2
the cost of education 5 is the use of 2
the health of a 5 is the way of 2
the progress of the 5 a part of our 2
the smoke of the 5 the future of our 2
the expenses of their 5 the people of our 2
is a kind of 5 the youth of our 2

60
the needs of their 5 a act of an 2
the cost of education 5 a burden on the 2
the needs of their 5 the country in this 2
is a place where 5 the beauty of the 2
is a kind of 5 the burden of the 2
it is taken in 4 the choice of the 2
it is taken in 4 the end of the 2
the disadvantages of smoking 4 the grip of the 2
the smoke of smoking 4 the health for the 2
the use of smoking 4 the life of both 2
for the survival of 4 the life of the 2
in the world of 4 the market at the 2
on the health of 4 the mind of the 2
the cause of many 4 the passage of the 2
the health of the 4 the people from the 2
the cause of many 4 the restaurants in the 2
the disadvantages of smoking 4 the survival of a 2
the smoke of smoking 4 a part of our 2
the use of smoking 4 the future of our 2
the health of people 4 the people of our 2
the number of smokers 4 the youth of our 2
the smoke of cigarettes 4 the act of smoking 2
the value of time 4 the company of bad 2
the health of the 4 the lifestyle of other 2
a fashion in our 4 the needs of whole 2
the need of the 3 a victim of smoking 2
the future of the 3 the concept of smoking 2
the income of a 3 the dan of smoking 2
the life of a 3 the harms of smoking 2
the income of a 3 the smell of smoking 2
the life of a 3 the users of smoking 2
the lungs of the 3 the victim of smoking 2
a trend in present 3 a fact of college 2
the health of human 3 a kind of job 2
the students of higher 3 a matter of fact 2
the craze of smoking 3 a type of drug 2
the trend of smoking 3 a wastage of money 2
a demand of experience 3 the advantages of part 2
a kind of drug 3 the burden of studies 2
the future of Pakistan 3 the burden of work 2
the problems of life 3 the disease of cancer 2
the type of drug 3 the experience of work 2
the use of tobacco 3 the fee of children 2
the basis of their 3 the health of smokers 2

61
the burden of his 3 the help of job 2
the difficulties in their 3 the heroes of films 2
the people in their 3 the importance of money 2
the problems of their 3 the life of smoker 2
the progress of their 3 the lives of others 2
for the health for 3 the ministry of health 2
for the purpose of 3 the need of students 2
from the difficulties in 3 the number of people 2
in the life of 3 the numbers of smokers 2
in the restaurants for 3 the owner of restaurant 2
of the people of 3 the people of Pakistan 2
the future of the 3 the sake of experience 2
the health of human 3 the smoke of cigrete 2
on the basis of 3 the strength of smoker 2
on the study of 3 the students of colleges 2
to the way of 3 the study of students 2
with the cost of 3 the wastage of money 2
with the problems of 3 the duty of government 2
the purpose of
for human health in 3 2
enjoyment
may be discouraging to 3 the sake of enjoyment 2
can get rid of 3 a burden on their 2
may be discouraging to 3 the cost of their 2
the sense of
the trend of smoking 3 2
responsibility
may be discouraging to 3 the needs of his 2
the craze of smoking 3 the study of their 2
is the type of 3 a sense of responsibility 2
is the place where 3 the costs of university 2
is a type of 3 the knowledge of every 2
is the duty of 3 the sense of some 2
is the need of 3 the idea of acquiring 2
the basis of their 3 the sake of earning 2
the smoke from
the burden of his 3 2
spreading
the societies for
the problems of their 3 2
controlling
the progress of their 3 at the end of 2
the students of higher 3 by the act of 2
the lungs of the 3 by the ministry of 2

In order to make explicit the most frequent occurrences, 200

most frequent instances were considered out of 1955 types of 4-

62
word bundles. For example, the frequent lexical bundles are “the
smoke of cigarette”, “with the passage of”, “the passage of time”, “for the sake of”
and “with the help of” which have been counted with their different occurrences. As
far as comparison across genres is concerned, the current study has shared the most
frequent patterns found the Pakistani learners’ essays; on the other hand, the most
frequent patterns in Pakistani doctoral theses such as “on the other hand”, “on the
basis of”, “in the forms of”, “at the graduate level”, and “the results of the” were
found (Anjum, 2019). Both academic genres have different choices of 4-word lexical
bundles in Pakistani academic doctoral theses and learners’ essays.

4.2.1 Functional Analysis

The second approach is about the functional analysis of lexical bundles found
in Pakistani Academic Learners’ essays under the tray of Biber’s model (2006). The
section has selected some lexical bundles and exemplified them functionally. For
functional analysis, the given table 4.6 has shown such identified examples.

4.2.2 Functional Analysis of Lexical Bundles

The formulaic language patterns are categorized by Biber

(1999) into eight different elements such as “Noun Phrase + of,
other noun phrases, prepositional phrase + of, other prepositional
phrases, passive + prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adj,
be + noun/adj phrase, and others”. The present study has followed
the functional categories of lexical bundles as proposed by Biber et
al. (2004, p. 386-388) for functional analysis.

4.2.2.1 Noun Phrase + of

The presence of “Noun phrase + of” is seen in Pakistani

academic learners’ essays. This is the second largest grammatical
category out of eight. 21% of 2510 bundles has been noted. This
category has been divided into 17 different formulaic patterns as
above presented. In this connection, the selected examples are
discussed below in which lexical bundles perform certain functions
as observed.

63
 1) At last they have face the problem and use of these drugs
not only damage the health of a man but also creates
lack of confidence lack of will power and makes a man is
run from each type of problem.
(W_PAK_SMK0_063_B1_2.txt)

In example 1, the use of “the health of a” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows complexity in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _dt) of the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase
+ of.”

2) But the smoke of cigarette also affects the person who

sits around the smoker. (W_PAK_SMK0_019_B1_2.txt)

In example 2, the use of “the smoke of cigarette” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows the
quantitative attributes of the object (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388)
as a part of learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _nn) of the formulaic patterns of
“noun phrase + of.”

3) Actually, Muslims have inherited it through west because

it is not a part of our culture.
(W_PAK_SMK0_033_B1_2.txt)

In example 3, the use of “a part of our” as noun phrase shows

that it is as grammatical category, attributes the tangible framing as
a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp.
386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _fpp) of the formulaic patterns
of “noun phrase + of.”

4) Smoking is made the cause of many dangerous

diseases like Cancer, T. B and mouth's cancer.
(W_PAK_SMK0_021_B1_2.txt)

64
 In example 4, the use of “the cause of many” as noun phrase
shows that it is as grammatical category, shows complexity and
quantity specifications as a sub-category of referential expressions
(Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established
by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _quan) of
the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

5) They can share the burden of their parents by doing so

because some parents cannot pay fees & dues of their
children's study & they cannot complete their studies.
(W_PAK_PTJ0_099_B1_2.txt)

In example 5, the use of “the burden of their” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows complexity and
attributes intangible framing (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. the burden of their) of the formulaic patterns of “noun
phrase + of.”

6) The students of higher secondary level in

comparatively backward areas in the world do part time
jobs, but this activity interferes their study.
(W_PAK_PTJ0_056_B1_2.txt)

In example 6, the use of “The students of higher” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows the focus
and specifies the quantity (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _jj) of the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase
+ of.”

7) Although the idea of acquiring a part-time job may be

discouraging to some students, it does have its
advantages. (W_PAK_PTJ0_079_B1_1.txt)

65
 In example 7, the use of “the idea of acquiring” as noun
phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, attributes an
intangible framing as a sub-category of referential expressions
(Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established
by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _vbg) of
the formulaic patterns of noun phrase + of.

8) But know it has become important part of fashion so the

youngsters have made a part of this habit.
(W_PAK_SMK0_158_B1_1.txt)

In example 8, the use of “a part of this” as noun phrase shows

that it is as grammatical category, shows imprecision and specifies
the quantity as a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et
al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by
Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _demo) of
the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

9) With the cost of education on the rise, more students

are feeling the need to try to achieve some sort of
financial independence. (W_PAK_PTJ0_154_B1_1.txt)

In example 9, the use of “the cost of education” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows the tangible
framing attributes as a sub-category of referential expressions
(Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established
by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _nomz)
of the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

10) Smoking is a kind of morphemic is very bad for the

health of anybody. (W_PAK_SMK0_042_B1_1.txt)

In example 10, the use of “the health of anybody” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, attributes the
tangible framing (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing

66
as established by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt
_nn of_ _qupr) of the formulaic patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

11) He spends his life as a person of well experienced.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_074_B1_1.txt)

In example 11, the use of “a person of well” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows the identification or
focus as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp.
386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _rb) of the formulaic patterns of
“noun phrase + of.”

12) And doing a part time you resolve the burden of your
parents. (W_PAK_PTJ0_185_B1_1.txt)

In example 12, the use of “the burden of your” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, attributes the tangible
framing as a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al.,
2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _spp) of the formulaic
patterns of noun phrase + of.

13) It causing the death of very young people who are

going to be the next Qadeer khan or Abdul-Star Edhi.
(W_PAK_SMK0_092_B1_2.txt)

In example 13, the use of “the death of every” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, frames the tangible
attributes as a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al.,
2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (_dt _nn of_ _amp) of the formulaic
patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

14) The expenses of now a days is going very high.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_129_B1_2.txt)

67
 In example 14, the use of “the expenses of now” as noun
phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to the time
as a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp.
386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _time) of the formulaic patterns
of “noun phrase + of.”

15) Firstly he starts to feel relief and gradually, he becomes

a victim of it and he can never have this bad habit until
proper treatment in given to him.
(W_PAK_SMK0_055_B1_2.txt)

In example 15, the use of “a victim of it” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, attributes the tangible
framing as a sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al.,
2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _pit) of the formulaic
patterns of “noun phrase + of.”

16) They just fly higher and higher while doing part time
jobs the brain of one become more and more sharp and
practical. (W_PAK_PTJ0_062_B1_1.txt)

In example 16, the use of “the brain of one” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, specifies the quantity as a
sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _dt _nn of_ _cd) of the formulaic patterns of
“noun phrase + of.”

4.2.2.2 Other Noun Phrase

The presence of “Other Noun phrases” has been searched in

Pakistani academic learners’ essays. This is the largest grammatical
category out of eight. 48% of 2510 bundles has been noted. The
said category has been distributed into 18 different formulaic
patterns as above presented. In this connection, the selected

68
examples are discussed below in which lexical bundles perform
certain functions as observed.

17) All these diseases in their acute from ends at death of

the smoking usually full in the disease of cancer.
(W_PAK_SMK0_120_B1_1.txt)

In example 17, the use of “at death of the” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, introduces the topic as a
sub-category of discourse organizers (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _pin _NN _pin _dt) of the formulaic patterns
of “other noun phrase.”

4.2.2.3 Prepositional Phrase + of

Another grammatical category “Prepositional phrase + of” has

been noted in Pakistani academic learners’ essays. This is the third
largest grammatical category out of eight. 16% of 2510 bundles
have been noted. This category has been divided into two different
formulaic patterns as above presented. In this connection, the
selected examples are discussed below in which lexical bundles
perform certain functions as observed.

18) In the beginning is it was very easy to get knowledge

but with the passage of time it has become very
difficult to acquire it. (W_PAK_PTJ0_150_B2_0.txt)

In example 18, the use of “with the passage of” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to time in
text as a sub-category referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp.
386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _pin _dt _nn _pin) of the formulaic patterns
of “Prepositional phrase + of”.

69
4.2.2.4 Other Prepositional Phrases

The presence of another grammatical category “Other

prepositional phrases” has been observed in Pakistani academic
learners’ essays. 2.91% of 2510 bundles have been noted. This
grammatical category has been divided into 3 different formulaic
patterns as above mentioned. In this connection, the selected
examples are discussed below in which lexical bundles perform
certain functions as observed.

19) They have interest in this job and do very well in both
in studies and job. (W_PAK_PTJ0_179_B1_1.txt)

In example 19, the use of “in both in studies” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to text deices as
sub-category of referential bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388)
in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners.
This is one (i.e. _pin _dt _pin _nn) of the formulaic patterns of “Other
prepositional phrases.”

20) Part time job become a trend in present age mostly

students attract toward it. (W_PAK_PTJ0_038_B1_2.txt)

In example 20, the use of “in present age mostly” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to time as a
sub-category of referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _pin _jj _nn _rb) of the formulaic patterns of
“Other prepositional phrases.”

4.2.2.5 Passive + Prepositional Phrase

The grammatical category “Passive + prepositional phrase”

has been studied in Pakistani academic learners’ essays. 2.94% of
2510 bundles have been noted. This category has been divided into
11 different formulaic patterns as above presented. In this

70
connection, the selected examples are discussed below in which
lexical bundles perform certain functions as observed.

21) They have no money like other children. But they are
found of study. (W_PAK_PTJ0_198_B1_1.txt)

In example 21, the use of “are found of study” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic stance as
a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. _VPRT [pass] _vbn [priv] _pin _nn) of the formulaic
patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

22) Now smokers are thought to modern and versatile

class of modern society but in reality they are destroying
their health their lives. (W_PAK_SMK0_098_B1_1.txt)

In example 22, the use of “are taught to modern” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic
stance as a sub-category of stance bundles in learners’ writing as
established by Pakistani academic learners. This is (i.e. _VPRT [pass]
_vbn [priv] _pin _jj) one of the formulaic patterns of “Passive +
prepositional phrase.”

23) Cigarettes have are seen in the mouths of even small

children. (W_PAK_SMK0_157_B1_2.txt)

In example 23, the use of “are seen in the” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic stance as
a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388)
in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners.
This is one (i.e. _VPRT [pass] _vbn [priv] _pin _dt) of the formulaic
patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

24) Even the well educate people are seen involved in the
pursuit. (W_PAK_SMK0_034_B1_2.txt)

71
 In example 24, the use of “are seen involved in” as noun
phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic
stance as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp.
386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _VPRT [pass] _vbn [priv] _vbn _pin) of the
formulaic patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

25) In this way we can get rid of this very serious problem.
(W_PAK_SMK0_133_B1_1.txt)

In example 25, the use of “can get rid of” as noun phrase
shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic stance
and ability as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004,
pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. _POMD _VB _pin) of the formulaic
patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

26) A part time job can be for this reason if a person has
interesting job or he has a minimum work . . .
(W_PAK_PTJ0_004_B1_1.txt)

In example 26, the use of “can be for this” as a noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, refers epistemic stance
and ability as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004,
pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. _POMD be_VB _pin _demo) of the
formulaic patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

27) Although, the idea of acquiring a part-time job may be

discouraging to some students, it does have its
advantages. (W_PAK_PTJ0_079_B1_1.txt)

In example 27, the use of “may be discouraging to” as a noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, represents an
epistemic stance as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al.,
2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani

72
academic learners. This is one (i.e. _POMD be_VB _vbg _pin) of the
formulaic patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

28) He may be get into a bad company.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_094_B1_2.txt)

In example 28, the use of “maybe got into” as a noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows an epistemic stance
as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _POMD be_VB _VB _pin) of the formulaic
patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

29) And then many diseases can be with the people.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_140_B1_2.txt)

In example 29, the use of “can be with the” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows an epistemic stance
as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. _POMD be_VB _nn _pin) of the formulaic
patterns of “Passive + prepositional phrase.”

30) Whatever may be causes of smoking is true that it is

injurious to health and may cause irreparable loss to
human life. (W_PAK_SMK0_115_B1_2.txt)

In example 30, the use of “may be causes of” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows epistemic stance as
a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. _POMD be_VB _nn _pin) of the formulaic patterns of
“Passive + prepositional phrase.”

4.2.2.6 Anticipatory it + Verb/Adjectival Phrase

The presence of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival” phrase has

been noted in Pakistani academic learners’ essays. 2.98% of 2510

73
bundles has been noted. This category has been divided into 8
different formulaic patterns as above presented. In this connection,
the selected examples are discussed below in which lexical bundles
perform certain functions as observed.

31) Secondly it is caused due to fashion.

(W_PAK_SMK0_115_B1_2.txt)

In example 31, the use of “it is caused due” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows an attitude and
obligation as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004,
pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit is_vprt _vbn _jj) of the
formulaic patterns of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

32) If it is taken in positive way it is very helpful.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_038_B1_2.txt)

In example 32, the use of “it is taken in” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, assumes and predicts as a
sub-category of discourse organizers (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-
388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic
learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit is_vprt _vbn _pin) of the formulaic
patterns of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

33) The world environmental day was celebrated and it was

declared that about 55% of the people inhale pollute air.
(W_PAK_SMK0_144_B2_0.txt)

In example 33, the use of “it was declared that” as noun

phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, shows assertion
and claims about the certainty (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This
is one (i.e. it_pit was_vbd _vbn _thvc) of the formulaic patterns of
“Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

74
 34) Initially it was used for medical purposes in the form
of hookah.(W_PAK_SMK0_168_B1_2.txt)

In example 34, the use of “it was used for” as noun phrase
shows that it is as grammatical category, elaborates the topic of
discussion as a sub-category of discourse organizers (Biber et al.,
2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit was_vbd _vbn _pin) of the
formulaic patterns of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

35) . . . they think that they cover syllabus well and it is

good thing for students to achieve or get some extra
thing . . . (W_PAK_PTJ0_171_A2_0.txt)

In example 35, the use of “it is good thing” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, elaborates the topic
politely as a sub-category of discourse organizers (Biber et al., 2004,
pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit _vprt _jj _nn) of the
formulaic patterns of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

36) It is recreational supportive in productive.

(W_PAK_PTJ0_165_B1_2.txt)

In example 36, the use of “it is recreational supportive” as

noun phrase shows that it is as grammatical category, exhibits an
obligation as a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004,
pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit _vprt _jj _jj) of the formulaic
patterns of “Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival phrase.”

37) It is bad enough that automobiles, processing plants,

and other types of industries which pollute our
environment. (W_PAK_SMK0_170_B1_1.txt)

In example 37, the use of “it is bad enough” as anticipatory it

+ verb/adjectival shows that it is as grammatical category, shows

75
the negative impact on the general statement and this anticipates
the negative effects of the things as established by Pakistani
academic learners. This is one (i.e. it_pit _vprt _jj _rb) of the
formulaic patterns of “Anticipatory + verb/adjectival Phrase.”

4.2.2.7 Be + noun/adjectival phrase

The presence of “BE + noun/adjectival phrase” is seen in

Pakistani academic learners’ essays. 5.12% of 2510 bundles have
been noted. This category has resulted more than “Other
Prepositional Phrases, Passive + Prepositional Phrase, Anticipatory it
+ verb/adj”. This category has been divided into 5 different
formulaic patterns as above presented. In this connection, the
selected examples are discussed below in which lexical bundles
perform certain functions as observed.

38) Part time job is a kind of job which is in addition to the

job or business a person is doing to increase his income
than expenses or to meet his expenses.
(W_PAK_PTJ0_007_B1_2.txt)

In example 38, the use of “is a kind of” as noun phrase shows
that it is as grammatical category, used to compare two or more
similar things and identifies the topic as a sub-category of discourse
organizers (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) as established by
Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _vprt _dt _nn _pin) of
the formulaic patterns of “BE + noun/adjectival Phrase.”

39) But it is a fact that in this way much of their time is

wasted and they have to do a lot of work complete with
other student. (W_PAK_PTJ0_145_B1_2.txt)

In example 39, the use of “is a fact that” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to epistemology as
a sub-category of stance bundles (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in
which leaner’s writing imparts information against the matter as
established by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _vprt _dt

76
_nn _ demo) of the formulaic patterns of “BE + noun/adjectival
Phrase.”

40) College is a place where students enjoy and do other

activities freely. (W_PAK_PTJ0_046_B1_2.txt)

In example 40, the use of “is a place where” as noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, refers to place as a sub-
category of referential expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388)
in learners’ writing as established by Pakistani academic learners.
This is one (i.e. _vprt _dt _nn _ rb) of the formulaic patterns of “BE +
noun/adjectival Phrase.”

41) Pakistan is a country full of color and zest, rich in

culture. (W_PAK_PTJ0_190_B1_1.txt)

In example 41, the use of “is a country full” as a noun phrase

shows that it is as grammatical category, shows an
identification/focus (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’
writing as established by Pakistani academic learners. This is one
(i.e. _vprt _dt _nn _jj) of the formulaic patterns of “BE +
noun/adjectival Phrase.”

42) Part time job is a job done for few hours, in the
industrial societies the job hours are divided in two
categories. (W_PAK_PTJ0_146_B1_2.txt)

In example 42, the use of “is a job place” as BE +

noun/adjectival phrase shows that it is as grammatical category,
refers to the time reference as a sub-category of referential
expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as
established by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _vprt _dt
_nn _vbn) of the formulaic patterns of “BE + noun/adjectival
Phrase.”

4.2.2.8 Other

77
 The presence of “Other BE + noun/adjectival phrase” is seen
in Pakistani academic learners’ essays. 0.57% of 2510 lexical
bundles has been noted. This category has resulted more than
“Other Prepositional Phrases, Passive + Prepositional Phrase,
Anticipatory it + verb/adjectival Phrase”. This category has
proposed a formulaic pattern as above presented. In this
connection, the selected examples are discussed below in which
lexical bundles perform certain functions as observed.

43) Restaurants are the places where one goes for

relaxation, spending time with one's family, having
lunches, dinners with friends, family etc.
(W_PAK_SMK0_149_B1_2.txt)

In example 43, the use of “are the places where” as

noun/adjectival phrase shows that it is as grammatical category,
refers to the place reference as a sub-category of referential
expressions (Biber et al., 2004, pp. 386-388) in learners’ writing as
established by Pakistani academic learners. This is one (i.e. _vprt _dt
_nn _rb) of the formulaic patterns of “Other BE + noun/adjectival
Phrase.”

Chapter 5

Conclusion

This study has summed up and answered the following points

in which the research purpose, research objects, significance of the
study, findings of the study, limitations of the study, practical

78
applications of the study and recommendation for the future of the
study have been summarized. Initially, the prime purpose of the
study was about how Pakistani learners establish phrasal complexity
in form lexical bundles at 4-word levels in an argumentative writing.
The second purpose of the study was comparing the results of
Pakistani learners’ essays with doctoral theses (Anjum, 2019). In
order to understand the way of doing this research, the current
study has made some objectives such as to find out the lexical
complexity in Pakistani English learners academic writing, to find out
the kinds of lexical bundles in Pakistani English Academic writing, to
find out the linguistic variation of lexical bundles in learner’s
corpora, and to find out the roles of lexical bundles in the
development of discourse in Pakistani English leaner’s academic
writing.

In order to answer the established purposes, the present study

has developed a research paradigm in which the way of proposing
formulaic patterns of the following phrasal categories (Biber, 2006)
were exposed using software AntConc3.4.4.0. All these formulaic
patterns were explored at 4-word levels. After exploring these
crucial patterns, the numerical results of the formulaic patterns were
noted from doctoral theses by Anjum (2019) in her study. In this
continuation, the current study compared Pakistani learners’ essays
formulaic patterns as results with doctoral theses in which it was
revealed that doctoral theses used more phrasal categories as
compared to the argumentative essays by Pakistani learners. This is
the point to show that Pakistani doctoral theses used more phrasal
categories to create complexities than Pakistani learners’ essays.

This section has dealt lexical bundle patterns explored in

Pakistani leaner academic writing: Argumentative essays. In sum,
the current study has practiced Biber’s (1999) model on 4-word
bundles in learners’ essay writing. In order to conduct both
structural and functional analyses, the former analysis has been

79
made to explore different varieties of formulaic patterns in terms of
frequency of type and token bundles. In order to make “Noun Phrase
+ of” explicit, 17 formulaic patterns have been devised. Similarly,
the rest of phrasal categorizations have been formulated in different
formulaic patterns of 4-word bundles.

The current study found the occurrences of phrasal

categorizations in Pakistani academic learners’ argumentative
essays in terms of type and token word-bundles. As far as the type
of bundles are concerned, Pakistani academic learners’ essay used
20.6% noun phrase + of, 48.13% other noun phrase, 15.25%
prepositional phrase + of, 3.63% other prepositional phrases, 3.27%
passive + prepositional phrase, 3.47% anticipatory “it”
+verb/Adjective, 5.32% BE + noun/adjectival phrase, and 0.36%
other phrases. Overall, Pakistani academic learners’ argumentative
essays used more varieties of “other noun phrases” bundles. The
second more frequent type of phrases “noun phrase + of” was
noted in the data.

Similarly, the total frequency of phrasal categorizations has

been observed in terms of token word bundles. Pakistani learners’
argumentative essays used approximately 2510 word bundles. Out
of the total, the most frequent type of “other noun phrases” were
used 48.01% in Pakistani learners’ argumentative essays.

Further, the Pakistani learners’ essays employed more variety

of phrases rather token phrases than doctoral theses. This way of
comparison between Pakistani learners’ essays and Pakistani
learners’ doctoral theses has answered the purpose. The way of
proposing formulaic patterns has also answered the prime purpose
of the study.

This study also opens the new ways of understanding to know about phrasal
complexity through lexical bundles. In this study, the researcher has sorted out the
problem of lexical bundles which are found in Pakistani academic learners’ writing.

80
To this study, the researcher knows how discourse is developed. The researcher is able
to know where lexical complexities and variations are found in and its impact in
Pakistani learners’ writings.

In the same way, this study also provides pedagogical

implications in which the teachers can use the results to teach the
students phrasal patterns to establish complexities in their
academic writings. Moreover, the formulaic patterns may help the
learners to learn these lexical bundles to improve their writing
styles. In this regard, this approach of teaching lexical patterns will
enhance variety of their writing structures. This kind of study may
be a source of primary level studies where the students are taught
writing skills. This study will also assist the future researchers to use
these patterns in their professional writing.

5.1 Recommendations for the Future Researches

The findings of this study may be a source for future

researches.

First of all, lexical bundles in terms of phrases can be studied

in other languages and disciplines. The proposed formulaic patterns
of phrasal categories could be practiced in other languages and
other disciplines’ language to get interesting outcomes for
improving learning through teaching phrasal categorization in terms
of lexical bundles. This sort of activity may validate and make sure
the reliability of the framework as proposed in this study.

Secondly, each category of the proposed formulaic patterns

can be individually applied to the larger data.

Thirdly, the current study can provide a framework to explore

different formulaic patterns in text types.

81
 Fourthly, the explored lexical bundles at 4-word levels of the
current study can be solid grounds to study more or less word level
patterns.

Next, in order to have precise results- the upcoming

researchers are suggested to use software skillfully or may have
preliminary skills about how to run software to get the desired
results.

Then, this study also suggests that the finding as formulaic

patterns can be implemented to spoken data: speeches, dialogues,
conversation, discussions and etc.

Further, the sort of study appears first time in Pakistan and

also invites others to follow this study as framework to explore new
dimensions.

Furthermore, as this study compared its results to other

studies. Similarly, this sort of comparison can be seen between
native and non-native academic writers to know their cultural
differences. Lastly, this sort of framework can also be used in
syllabus or course designing.

82
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