PATTERNS OF LEXICAL BUNDLES IN THE THESIS ARTICLES

OF THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
OF UNIVERSITAS NEGERI MALANG

Kaukab Buduriyah, Utami Widiati, Nunung Suryati

Universitas Negeri Malang
kaukab.buduriyah@gmail.com

Abstract One of the factors in obtaining writing coherence is by utilizing lexical

bundles in bridging the idea or information discussed in a particular writing. The
lexical bundles study in Indonesia focusing in a particular discipline is still few,
thus the current study is conducted in order to find the lexical bundles patterns
used in the ELT and ELL undergraduate students’ thesis articles. The study
design is qualitative and descriptive with attempt to explain each finding found
in the analysis as deed as possible. The data obtained was language data in the
form of English Department’s students’ unpublished thesis articles which was
saved in Ms. Word and year of submission of 2015 up to 2017. The data was
obtained with the help of AntConc concordance software and analyzed by
employing a lexical bundles patterns checklist adopted from Heng, et al.’s
(2014). From the analysis and discussion, the results show that the most
frequently occurred patterns in the articles was referential bundles which has 35
patterns out of 50 patterns found in the study or 70% of the total patterns found.
For further research, it is noted to implement lexical bundles pedagogically since
it has chance in teaching and learning process.

Key words: lexical bundles, English Department’s undergraduate students,

thesis articles

The written language is very important for people since it is the core part
of indirect communication. Griffies and Perrie (2013) also stated that written
communication plays crucial role in transferring knowledge and interpreting
results of studies because an unclear language may fail the message conveyed.
The written language is considered as an indirect communication when someone,
especially the writer, communicates or conveys his idea without facing or meeting
his writing’s readers.
Written language gives benefit to people because they can edit or correct
their mistakes and dictions in their writing before they send it to others or
publishers. However, the written language is the hardest way in communication
for it needs to be error free yet it is the easiest way to be edited even modified

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than spoken language. Thus, the writers need to maintain the coherence in their
writing to convey their messages toward their readers. It is in line with
Karadeniz’s (2017) statement that coherence affects the writing quality since it
brings the whole ideas into one full writing text. One of the ways in obtaining
writing coherence is by utilizing lexical bundles which is able to bridge the
writers’ idea or information discussed in their writing.
Lexical bundles are the extended colloquial words (Heng, et al., 2014)
which consist of 3 up to 5 words bundles and repeatedly occurred in a register. LB
can support writing coherence indirectly (Pang, 2008) because people tend to use
the lexical bundles in their writing unconsciously since the lexical bundles
occurrences are too common in a register. People do not aware the function of
lexical bundles in their writing yet use the lexical bundles to link their ideas in
clauses.
Lexical bundles functions can be as referential bundles (at the beginning
of), discourse organizers (as a result), and attitudinal bundles (it should be noted
that) (Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2012). A referential bundle may function to relate
the author’s idea toward “the representation of reality”, while the discourse
organizers propose textual meaning concerning the organization of a text and the
development of argumentation. Next, the attitudinal bundles may express the
writer’s interpersonal point of view or opinion meaning. Those functions will help
the coherence development in writing. In other words, by using the lexical
bundles, people can maintain the coherence in their writing since it may clarify
what is expressed by the writer and bridge two phrases or clauses so that it can
introduce the following dependent clause in both compound and complex
sentences (Pang, 2008).
It is unfortunate that sometimes there are undergraduate students,
especially from English Department, who still lack in using lexical bundles in
their writing and they use other longer phrasal words instead. Thus, many studies
are conducted to investigate lexical bundles used by students in their academic
writing to know how well the students apply the bundles in their writing. The
previous studies are mostly investigating the frequently used patterns in students’
academic writing whether the students are L1 or L2. For instance studies

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conducted by Hyland (2008), Allen (2009), Wei and Lei (2011), Dontcheva-
Navratilova (2012), Jalali, et al. (2015), Prihantoro (2015), and Kwary, et al.
(2017) investigated the four-words lexical bundles based on the frequency of
occurrence, structures, and functions of the lexical bundles which are used in
students’academic writing.
Lexical Bundles studies in Indonesia are still few. First is a study
conducted by Kwary, et al. (2017). They also investigated the use of lexical
bundles in science journals across different academic disciplines: health, life,
physics, and social science. The result also shows that the writers from those 4
disciplines use different patterns of lexical bundles even some of the disciplines
do not share same bundles at all in their writing. Second, a study conducted by
Prihantoro (2016) explored the unnatural sequences of Multi Words Units
(MWUs) used in academic writing from Undergraduate English Department
students of 6th semester from Universitas Diponegoro, Indonesia. Prihantoro
compared the MWUs found in the students’ academic writing with COCA and
BNC corpus while employing SEAlang Indonesia Corpus to validate the influence
of first language (L1). His study shows that the errors found in the academic
writing were affected by students’ L1 (Bahasa Indonesia). All in all, the two
studies show that environment affects students’ behavior in using lexical bundles,
and even students from English Department are still make errors in their writing.
The previous studies show that writers from different majors and
department with different proficiency use different patterns of structures and
functions of lexical bundles. Even though there are already some studies which
investigate the lexical bundles used in applied linguistic, there is no study which
investigates the lexical bundles use in thesis articles from English Department
students who have no particular lexical bundles course or training and how the
lexical bundles behave when embedding with its following phrase or clause since
lexical bundles may introduce new topic of paragraph.
Based on the structural categories proposed by Heng, et al. (2014) which
was adopted from Biber, et al.’s (2004) taxonomy, the lexical bundles found in the
undergraduate students’ thesis articles are categorized into three main structures.
They are lexical bundles which include noun phrase and prepositional phrase

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fragments, verb phrase fragments, and dependent clause fragments. Those
fragments may introduce its following idea which is in the form of clause or
phrase. For example, a prepositional phrase expression at the end of may collocate
with time reference (noun phrase) like in at the end of the semester. The noun
phrase the semester tends to be a neutral word because it does not raise both
positive and negative perception to the readers, so that the lexical bundles at the
end of can be classified into lexical bundles which behave neutral.
Therefore, this study will investigate the patterns of lexical bundles used in
the thesis articles of undergraduate students whose discipline is English
Department with study programs of English Language Teaching (ELT) and
English Language Literature (ELL) in Universitas Negeri Malang in terms of their
frequently used bundles for both the structural and functional patterns, and their
behavior towards its following phrase or clause since particular lexical bundles
may have different structural patterns across department or study program, even
though they have the same functional pattern.

METHOD
This study used qualitative and descriptive design with attempt to explain
each finding found in the analysis as deep as possible. The data obtained was
language data in the form of lexical bundles in thesis articles of the undergraduate
students of the English Department which were divided into three groups: ELT
(English Language Teaching), ELL (English Language Literature)-Linguistics,
and ELL (English Language Literature)-Literature. The thesis articles were
unpublished articles which are available in the English Department’s computer
and saved in Ms. Word with year of submission from 2015 up to 2017. The thesis
articles also should be consisted of 10 up to 15 pages. Thus, there were 54 thesis
articles collected which consisted of 18 articles for each group. Thus, there were 6
thesis articles each year for each group.

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Instrument
Lexical bundles patterns checklist and guideline adopted from Heng, et
al’s (2014) study was utilized as the instrument to collect and analyze the lexical
bundles obtained from the three groups. The instrument categorized the patterns
of lexical bundles based on their structure and their function which consists of
three sub-categories of patterns for each patterns. The sub-categories of the
patterns based on structure are NP and PP fragments, VP fragments and dependent
clause fragments while the sub-categories of patterns based on function are
referential bundles, discourse organizers and stance bundles. The checklist can be
seen in table 1.

Table 1. The Lexical Bundles Patterns Checklist (Heng, et al. 2014)

Categories f
Structural categories Sub-categories
1. Lexical bundles which include 1.a 1st/2nd person pronoun + VP fragment
verb phrase fragments 1.b 3rd person pronoun + VP fragment
1.c discourse marker + VP fragment
1.d Verb phrase (with non-passive verb)
1.e Verb phrase (with passive verb)
1.f yes-no question fragments
1.g WH-question fragments

2. Lexical bundles which include
dependent clause fragments
2.a 1st/2nd person pronoun + dependent clause
fragments
2.b WH-clause fragments
2.c If-clause fragments
2.d to-clause fragment
2.e That-clause fragment

3. Lexical bundles which include
noun phrase and prepositional
phrase fragments
3.a noun phrase with of-phrase fragment
3.b noun phrase with other post-modifier
fragment
3.c other noun phrase expressions
3.d prepositional phrase expressions
3.e comparative expression

Functional categories Sub-categories

1. Stance Bundles 1.a epistemic stance
1.b attitudinal/modality stance
1.b.1 desire
1.b.2 obligation/directive
1.b.3 intention/prediction
1.b.4 ability

2. Discourse organizers 2.a topic introduction

2.b topic elaboration / clarification

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 3. Referential bundles 3.a identification/focus
3.b imprecision
3.c specification of attributes
3.c. 1 quantity specification
3.c.2 tangible framing
3.c .3 intangible framing
3.d time/ place/ text reference
3.d.1 place reference
3.d.2 time reference
3.d.3 text-deixis
3.d.4 multi-functional reference

Collecting the Data

There are five steps in collecting the data. It started from making a
research permission letter which will be given to the Dean of the Faculty of Letter
to get the approval of research permission letter. The next step after getting the
approval from the Dean of the Faculty of Letter is giving the research permission
letter to the Head of the English Department due to the sample of the data was
taken from the Department. After getting the permission to collect the data from
the Head of the English Department, the permission letter was given to the
Secretary of the English Department. Finally, the last step is retrieving the thesis
articles from the English Department’s computer.
The thesis articles collected consisted of 54 thesis articles with total of
192,854 words. The total words were limited so that the frequency cut-off used
is10 times and range at least in 5 articles is used. The total 54 thesis articles were
separated based on the focused study programs which has been explained above
and each thesis articles was converted into plain text version (.txt) through
Microsoft Office Words 2007 after excluding any citation, titles, sub titles,
pictures, diagrams, tables, and references list found within the thesis articles.
The Lexical bundles collected were only the four word lexical bundles.
AntConc concordance software is utilized in collecting the lexical bundles from
the data collected. The software also makes possible for the lexical bundles to be
investigated more in terms of their following phrase collocated with them.

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Analyzing the Data
To analyze the data, there are three processes in this study, starting from
listing, categorizing and analyzing. The first process was listing the lexical
bundles obtained from the data, here the lexical bundles found were listed based
on their frequency of occurrence, the highest frequency were listed in the first row
of the table. The second process was categorizing the patterns of lexical bundles
both structurally or functionally from each focused study programs, the lexical
bundles patterns guidelines and the lexical bundles checklist are employed in
categorizing each patterns found in the articles. The last process was analyzing
how the functional lexical bundles patterns, especially the discourse organizers
pattern collocate with their following phrase/clause.
The structural and functional patterns of lexical bundles found in the thesis
articles were identified by utilizing lexical bundles patterns’ guideline from Heng,
et al. (2014) in Appendix 1; and compared to the lexical bundles checklist which
is shown in Table 1.
In analyzing the data, some previous studies other than Heng, et al.’s were
used to make sure that the lexical bundles were correctly categorized for both
structurally and functionally. The other studies used were the study from Conrad
and Biber (2005), Hyland (2008), Pang (2010), Wei and Lei (2011), Doncheva-
Navratilova (2012), and Kwary, et al. (2017). Those previous studies were used to
support the completeness of the patterns’ categorization as well as comparison of
the patterns found in this current study.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

There are 50 patterns of lexical bundles from the three groups were
obtained regarding the frequency cut-off and range used. Out of the total patterns
found, 41 patterns were found in ELT group, 6 patterns were found in ELL-
Linguistics group and the last 3 patterns were found in ELL-Literature group. The
result of the Lexical Bundles found in the three groups is shown in Table 2.

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 Table 2. The Frequency Distribution of Lexical Bundles
The Thesis Articles Patterns of LBs Total % of Total Total
(Tokens) Cases Words Words
ELT 41 794 1.26 62,580
ELL-Linguistics 6 69 0.13 52,479
ELL-Literature 3 37 0.04 77,795
Total LBs 50 192,854

The result shows that the lexical bundles occurred in the ELT
undergraduates students’ thesis articles was only 1.26% of the total words of the
articles. However, the ELL undergraduate students’ used less lexical bundles in
their thesis articles than the ELT undergraduate students. The lexical bundles
occurred in the ELL undergraduate students’ thesis articles only 0.13% in
Linguistics and 0.04% in Literature undergraduate students. The big different in
using the lexical bundles might be influenced by the environment and the cases
discussed in their thesis were too varied than the ELT undergraduate students.

Lexical Bundles Patterns Based on Structural Categories

Based on the Structural Categories, the result shows that some patterns in
the checklist were absent, such as the 1st/2nd person pronoun + VP fragment,
discourse marker + VP fragment, WH-clause fragments, etc., which means that
the undergraduate students do not produce any of those particular patterns in their
thesis articles. However, it was very surprising that the undergraduate students
from both focused study programs in ELL groups are producing very low lexical
bundles patterns in their thesis articles although their total number of words was
nearly the same as the ELL group. To ease the understanding of the distribution of
the lexical bundles patterns based on their structural patterns in each group, Table
4 synthesized the distributions of the patterns found.
Table 4. Structural Bundles Distribution of Target Bundles in the Three Groups
No. of bundles No. of bundles
Structural No. of bundles
patterns in ELL patterns in ELL
Patterns patterns in ELT
(Ling.) (Lit.)
NP and PP
fragments 31 4 2
VP fragments 6 1 1
Dependent clause
fragments 2 0 0
Non-classified 2 1 0
Total 41 6 3
Note: VP = Verb Phrase, NP = Noun Phrase, PP = Prepositional Phrase

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 In Table 4, the distribution of Lexical Bundles found in the three groups
was displayed. It shows that the NP and PP Fragments of Structural Patterns was
the most frequently occurred bundles in the three groups. Then, it was followed by
the VP fragments and Dependent Clause Fragments respectively. However, there
were 3 patterns were categorized as non-classified patterns due to their
inappropriate patterns which did not meet the requirement to be categorized as the
patterns provided in the checklist. The discussion of each patterns based on the
structural categories is as follows:

Noun Phrase (NP) and Prepositional Phrase (PP) Fragments

The wide difference between the three fragments of Structural Categories
revealed that the undergraduate students tend to use NP and PP fragments in
referencing their thought, for instance when using the lexical bundles the result of
the, and in the form of, in their thesis articles instead of the other fragments, like
in:

(i) If a test is not valid, the result of the test may not represent the real result
because it does not measure what it is supposed to measure……….....(ELT)
(ii) Here, the meaning of the sentence is to ask Nisa to go home therefore the
word ”ayo” which is should be pronounced using imperative tone because it
emphasizes the intended meaning of the sentence………………(ELL-Ling)
(iii) Her free-spirited character is a total opposite of how the traditional image
of princess is, but at the same time, her powerlessness is not…... (ELL-Lit)

The lexical bundles the result of the in example (i) shows that the lexical
bundles relates the topic being suggested in the study to the fact which
happen in the students’ surrounding. The lexical bundles the meaning of
the in example (ii) reveals that the lexical bundles is used to modify its
following noun so that they function as topic elaboration/clarification in
the topic being discussed by the students (Pang, 2010). Last, lexical
bundles at the same time in the example (iii) is used for referring the time
in the students’ thesis articles.
Furthermore, the high production of NP fragment of lexical bundles in
writing is in line with the result of some previous studies conducted by Conrad
(2005), (Hyland, 2008), Wei and Lei (2011), Dontcheva-Navratilova (2012),
Heng, et al. (2014) and Kwary, et al. (2017).

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Verb Phrase (VP) Fragments
The VP fragments appeared in the second place in ELT and ELL-
Linguistics and ELL- Literature undergraduate students’ thesis articles whereas
the ELL-Linguistics undergraduate students were equally produce the VP
fragments and the dependent clause fragment in their thesis articles. However, the
ELL-Literature students were not producing any dependent clause fragment of
lexical bundles in their writing.
The VP fragments become popular in students to express their statement
when observing their research’s population or sample. For instance:

(iv) Thus, it can be concluded that the students who were given direct corrective
feedback achieved better than the students who were given indirect
corrective feedback in writing recount texts…………………..............(ELT)
(v) Based on the result of questionnaire, it was found out that all of the students
agreed that the implementation of topic-based picture cards are able to make
them interested and motivated during the implementation in the class.(ELT)
(vi) Table 2 above shows that Latin is one of the source languages of the
spells………………………………………………………........(ELL-Ling)
(vii) The unpredictable man character is the one who can save the heroine
character from the death…………………………………….……(ELL-Lit)

The lexical bundles can be concluded that in example (iv) shows that the student
attempted to clarify their explanation about their findings (Pang, 2010). Example
(v) shows that the lexical bundles based on the result is used for emphasizing the
topic being discussed in a particular study (Heng, et al. 2014). Last, the lexical
bundles is one of the and is the one who which occurred in examples (vi) and (vii)
reveals that different placing of VP fragments in both bundles are used for
identifying or focusing the idea being discussed toward the previous topic.

Dependent Clause Fragments

This fragment seemed seems to did not really get attention from the
students since it occurred very low in the three groups investigated, even only
occurred in the ELT group. The little amount of the production may reflect the
students’ proficiency that they still do not really acquire the benefit in using the
bundles although they were already the senior and graduated from English
Department. The phenomenon contradicts with Hyland’s statement that according

10
to him, “the absence of such clusters might reveal the lack of fluency of a novice
or newcomer to that community” (Hyland, 2008).
Furthermore, their failing in proving their fluency in their writing does not
mean that the students do not know the bundles. They might already know the
bundle even use it in their writing. The absence of some particular bundles may
be influenced by the frequency cut off and range which is used in retrieving the
bundles through the AntConc. Thus, I still could not judge whether the students
were really lack in their writing fluency because the bundles only can be
categorized as a lexical bundles when they meet the requirements need.
The dependent clause fragments bundles which only occurred in the ELT
group were 2 lexical bundles tokens. They are to improve student x, and it means
that the. From their original text, the authors (the ELT undergraduate students)
tried to clarify the topic respectively, like in:

(viii) The first validator gave 76% and the second validator gave 86%, it means
that the gap from the first validator and the second validator was
10%.…………………………………………………..……………..(ELT)
(ix) It means that the foreign cultures which are consumed by Indonesian
people have changed the lifestle of Indonesian people and can make them
forget their own culture…………………………………..................(ELT)

Non-Classified Bundles
The non-classified bundles were found by utilizing AntConc software, so
that there was no involvement in deciding whether they are lexical bundles or not.
They were found when the software could not read the apostrophe (‘), which
indicate the 3rd person’s possession, in the .txt file and become ‘x’ instead as
found in the bundles x the word x in the ELL-Linguistic group. The other non-
classified bundle found in the articles are and learning process. The, and by the
researcher. The. The three non-classified bundles were confusing because they do
not make sense but they occurred 13 times and ranged in 7 texts for and learning
process. The, 10 times and ranged in 7 texts in the ELT group, while 10 times and
ranged in 6 texts for x the word x in the ELL – Linguistics group. Furthermore,
the bundle x the word x was not expected to be found because it was accidentally
found through the AntConc software as well. Besides, the bundles and learning
process. The, and by the teacher. The were actually written by the ELT

11
undergraduate students in their thesis articles. These bundles were confusing
because they consist of NP fragments but followed by article the after point (.)
which indicated that the article the is included in the next sentence. Another
reason for excluding the bundle from NP fragments is that the bundle does not
meet the requirement of NP construction which require a noun to be the head of
the phrase and its modifier whether before or after the noun and the requirements
of NP fragments, which are NP with of-phrase and with other post modifier.

Lexical Bundles Patterns Based on Functional Categories

Based on Functional Categories, the most frequently occurred patterns was
referential bundles, then discourse organizers and the last was stance bundles.
However, the functional pattern of stance bundles was only occurred in ELT
groups. The low production of stance bundles was also showed that the
undergraduate students were not paying much attention to the benefit of using the
bundle in their writing. The distribution of Lexical Bundles based on functional
categories can be seen in Table 5.

Table 5. Functional Bundles Distribution of Target Bundles in the Three Groups

No. of bundles No. of bundles
Functional No. of bundles
patterns in ELL – patterns in ELL –
Patterns patterns in ELT
Linguistics Literature
Referential
Bundles 31 1 2
Discourse
Organizers 4 4 1
Stance Bundles 4 0 0
Non-classified 2 1
Total 41 6 3

Referential Bundles

The referential bundles patterns are elaborated more into 4 different

patterns, such as identification/ focus, imprecision, specification of attributes, and
time/place/text reference patterns. The specification of attributes patterns include
the quantity specification, tangible framing, and intangible framing, while the
time/place/text reference patterns include place reference, time reference, text-
deixis and multi-functional reference. Similar with the stance bundles pattern,

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there are some patterns in referential bundles patterns which were not occurred in
the three groups at all, such as imprecision, intangible frames, text-deixis and
multi-functional reference patterns as shown in Table 6.

Table 6. The Distribution of Referential Bundles in the Three Groups

Functional Patterns ELT
Referential Bundles
Identification/Focus the result of the
the implementation of the
teaching and learning process
the teaching and learning
the students x writing
implementation of the
strategy
the criteria of success
of the students x
the teacher x s
on the result of
based on the result
of the students were
of this study is
the students in the
for the students to
it can be concluded
it is suggested that
the students x ability
from the students x
teaching and learning
activities
the researcher x s
Imprecision - -
Quantity most of the students
Specification
all of the students
Tangible Framing in the form of
Intangible Framing - -
Place Reference in teaching and learning
State University of Malang
in the class the
Time Reference during the implementation of
at the end of
after the implementation of
the end of the
during the teaching and
Text-Deixis - -
Multi-Functional - -
Reference
Sub Total 32
ELL-Ling. ELL-Lit.
is one of the is the one who
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
-
- -
- -
- -
-
- -
- -
- -
- at the same
time
- -
- -
- -
- -
-
-
1 2

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 Generally, the ELT group produced more lexical bundles than the two
ELL groups. The identification/ focus pattern was the only referential bundles
pattern occurred in the three groups discussed and the most often occurred in the
thesis articles, however they did not share the same lexical bundles token at all.
The time reference patterns bundles were occurred only in ELT and ELL-
Literature groups. Then, the rest 3 referential bundles patterns, such as quantity
specification, tangible framing, and place reference, were only occurred in ELT
group.
Usually, the identification/focus of reference bundles patterns are noted by
the article “the” like in the bundles the result of the (ELT), is one of the (ELL-
Linguistics) and is the one who (ELL-Literature). The three were bundles used by
the undergraduate students for focusing the referred topic being discussed. The
bundles always refer to the previous discussion in their study. Hence, the idea or
topic which was previously discussed in the thesis articles can be known by
looking at the referential bundles: identification/focus patterns. For instance:

(i) The result of the try out process showed the students enjoyed the activities
on that day because they learned English through flashcard-based
game……………...…………………………………………………... (ELT)
(ii) All in all, LOLcat is one of the Internet language variations in which it is
also a language play………………………………...…………...(ELL-Ling)

The quantity specification patterns were only occurred in the ELT group.
However, the production was still low, which means that there were 2 lexical
bundles patterns/tokens occurred in investigated, they were most of the students,
and all of the students. The example is shown below:

(iii) Most of the students in the classroom did not use simple past tense to write a
recount text; instead they used simple present tense, which is a fatal mistake
in writing recount text..……..……………………………….(ELT)
(iv) Actually, the researcher was sure that all of the students knew Banyuwangi
but not all students knew the legend of...….........................................(ELT)

Tangible framing patterns only happened in ELT group. The lexical

bundles occurred was in the form of, like in:
(v) The lack of construct validity implied that the reading test of ENE 2014 for
junior high schools have to be reviewed in depth since the competences as
defined in the SKL and indicators in the blueprint does not match with the
test content in the form of test items…………………………………...(ELT)

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Besides, Place reference patterns were only occurred in ELT groups and they were
only 3 tokens/patterns, such as in teaching and learning, State University of
Malang, and in the class the. The bundles were classified as place reference
because the two bundles were initiated by preposition and the other one is the state
or name of a particular institution like in:

(vi) Besides, the strategy also helpful in encouraging students to be more

involved in teaching and learning process.……….....………….…....(ELT)
(vii) The interviewees were six students of sixth semester of ELT program of
State University of Malang…………………..………………….…....(ELT)
(viii) Therefore, to encounter the problems occurred in the class, the researcher
decided to combine mind mapping and indirect corrective feedback
strategy to improve students\x92 recount writing product………..….(ELT)

The time reference patterns bundles only occurred in ELT and ELL-Literature
groups. The lexical bundles found in ELT were 5 tokens, such as during the
implementation of, at the end of the, after the implementation of, the end of the,
and during the teaching and, while in ELL-Literature were found 1 token, it was
at the same time. The time reference patterns were noted by the preposition
indicating time occurrence, such as during, at, after, and the end of. The examples
are as follow:

(ix) The students showed high participation during the implementation of

mind-mapping and indirect corrective feedback strategy…………...(ELT)
(x) Ergo, the image of the black maids in the book is determined that they are
suitable people who perform domestic work, while at the same time
idealizing their image in racially submissive, primitive and
loyal……………………………………………………………..(ELL-Lit)

Discourse Organizers

The discourse organizers patterns usually initiate or introduce and

elaborating particular topic of a discussion in writing. Thus, the discourse
organizers patterns have chance to be elaborated more regarding its colloquial
words whether before or after the lexical bundles found in the articles. The
distribution of the patterns is shown in Table 7.

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 Table 7. The Distribution of Discourse Organizers in the Three Groups
Functional Patterns ELT ELL-Ling. ELL-Lit.
Discourse Organizers
Topic Introduction/Focus in this study the in this case the -
in this research -
the
Topic on the other on the other on the other
Elaboration/Clarification hand hand hand
it means that the the meaning of -
the
can be concluded - -
that
Sub Total 4 4 1

Table 7 shows the lexical bundles of discourse organizers found in the

three groups. From the table, it can be seen that there was difference between the
three groups discussed. The difference was that the ELT and ELL-Linguistics
groups produced both topic introduction/focus and topic elaboration/clarification
bundles patterns while the ELL-Literature group only produced the topic
elaboration/clarification bundle of functional pattern. However, there was an
interesting phenomenon happened here, in which the three groups produced the
same lexical bundle token which is on the other hand. It means that all the
students were probably already familiar with the function or benefit in using the
lexical bundle on the other hand.
The topic introduction patterns occurred once in ELT group and twice in
ELL-Linguistics group. The pattern in this study, the (ELT), in this case the, and
in this research the (ELL-Linguistics) show the undergraduate students’ intention
to introduce particular topic in their study. Like in:
(xi) In this study, the normal trading cards were modified into a game that is
suitable for teaching vocabulary called ‘Swip-Swap Trading
Cards’……………………………………………………...…….(ELT)
(xii) Since in this study, the experiment was done in only four meetings, the
future researchers are suggested to have more meetings in conducting the
experiment in order to make sure that the improvement of the students is
because of the method employed………………..…..(ELT)

The lexical bundles in this study, the in example (xi) collocates with noun phrase,
while in example (xii) it collocates with noun. Both noun phrase and noun were
indicated as neutral words since they do not initiate a negative expression.

16
 (xiii) In this case, the Source Language (SL) is derived from French which then
translated into English..……………….......…..………………(ELL-Ling)
(xiv) The first function, to convey the emotion, takes the lead in this case. The
second and the third functions are still needed by the user to avoid
misunderstanding......……………..…………………...………(ELL-Ling)

Example (xiii) displays that the lexical bundles emphasize the introduction
of the topic which is the Source Language (SL), therefore it collocated with NP
(the Source Language). Besides, the example (xiv) displays that the lexical
bundles collocated with idiom (takes the lead) and NP (second and third
functions). It happened because the article ‘the’ from the lexical bundles was
separated by the point (.), so that I had to see the word(s) which was both
previously collocated with the lexical bundles, and the following collocation word
as well. The NPs which collocated in the example (xiii) and (xiv) played as
neutral words since they did not arise negative nor positive attitude, while the
idiomatic word takes the lead seemed to raise the positive attitude as it focusing
the topic being discussed.

(xv) In this research, the researcher takes eight characters consist of four
male characters and four female characters, they are Jalil, Hakim,
Rasheed, Tariq, Nana, Fariba, Mariam and Laila. Those eight characters
represent the old and young generation in Afghanistan……..(ELL-Ling)
(xvi) To collect the data in this research, the researcher uses triangulation
steps; (1) observation, (2) documents by collecting screenshot of the
participants…………………………. ………………...……..(ELL-Ling)

The lexical bundles in this research, the played as the topic introduction as
well. There were no difference in the word(s) collocated after the lexical bundles,
like in the example (xv) and (xvi), which is noun. Thus, the lexical bundles
collocation words played as neutral in the sentences.
The topic elaboration/clarification occurred in the three groups discussed.
However, the tokens were decrease slowly in the three groups being three groups
being investigated from 3 tokens in ELT group, 2 tokens in ELL-Linguistics
group and 1 token in ELL-Literature group. The most interesting phenomenon
happened here as there is only 1 single token which occurred in the three groups
separately. The lexical bundles which occurred in the three groups is on the other
hand. The lexical bundles utilized by the students to elaborate or clarify the topic
being discussed in their thesis articles, like in:

17
 (xvii) On the other hand, the students of group 1 and group 2 in try-out II
showed their enthusiasm since the beginning of the game play...…(ELT)
(xviii) On the other hand, myriads of options made available by the
government do not fully meet the standards set by certain institutions
that mostly deal with a level of consumers\x92 satisfaction....(ELL-Ling)
(xix) On the other hand, this film shows that racial ideology is unconsciously
represented as dominant ideology that gives the excuse that the black
maids deserves to be treated unequally because of their
\x84otherness?.............................................................................(ELL-Lit)

Furthermore, others lexical bundles occurred in the ELT group are it

means that the and can be concluded that, while in ELL-Linguistics group was the
meaning of the. All the three lexical bundles included in topic elaboration or
clarification. However, when the lexical bundles it means that the and the
meaning of the tended more in elaborating the topic being discussed, the lexical
bundles can be concluded that was likely to clarify the topic indeed.
The lexical bundles it means that the and the meaning of the have the same
root ‘mean’ as their base. Even though the word ‘mean’ does not act the similarly
in the 2 lexical bundles, like as the word ‘mean’ in it means that the which acts as
verb then elaborated into ‘that-clause’ fragment, and the word ‘mean’ in the
meaning of the was the head of the noun phrase their function were still the same.
The examples of the use of the 2 tokens of lexical bundles were shown as follows:
(xx) Since the standard for high-stakes testing reliability according to Wells
& Wollack (2003) is .90, it means that the reading test of ENE 2014 for
the junior high schools is still far from the desirable one……….....(ELT)
(xxi) As closely related with the meaning of the words, when a persuasive
language is applied, the linguistic analysis might be done through reveal
is literary aspect….………………......…..……………..……(ELL-Ling)

The lexical bundles it means that the in example (xx) collocates with noun phrase,
while the meaning of the in example (xxi) collocates with noun. However, even
though the two lexical bundles collocates differently, they were still considered as
neutral words since they both attempted to focus the elaboration of the word being
referred in their thesis articles.

(xxii) Based on the findings, related with the elaboration process of SKL into
the blueprint, it can be concluded that there is incompatibility between
SKL and blueprint from the corresponding process of those two....(ELT)

The last is, the lexical bundles can be concluded that in example (xxii)
played in focusing the clarification of the topic being discussed especially for
concluding the previous topic.

18
Stance Bundles

The Stance bundles patterns were divided into 6 patterns; they are
epistemic stance, attitudinal/modality stance, desire, obligation/directive,
intention/prediction and ability. From Table 8, it can be seen that stance bundles
pattern was only occurred in ELT group and out of 6 patterns mentioned above,
there are only two patterns occurred; they are intention/prediction and ability
patterns.
Table 8. The Distribution of Stance Bundles in the Three Groups
Functional Patterns ELT ELL-Ling. ELL-Lit.
Stance Bundles
Epistemic Stance - - -
Attitudinal/Modality Stance - - -
Desire - - -
Obligation/Directive - - -
Intention/Prediction to improve - -
students x
Ability help the students - -
to
the students did - -
not
the students x - -
ability
Sub Total 4 0 0

In the intention/prediction pattern, the lexical bundles occurred was to

improve students x. The lexical bundle shows the researcher’s intention of using
particular strategy, like in:

(xxiii) Therefore, to encounter the problems occurred in the class, the

researcher decided to combine mind mapping and indirect corrective
feedback strategy to improve students x recount writing product.....(ELT)

Besides, in ability patterns, the lexical bundles occurred are help the
students to, and the students did not. The lexical bundles help the students to
shows the ability of particular strategy in improving particular skills of the
students, like in:

(xxiv) This study found that through pre-writing stages such as pair-clustering
strategy could help the students to generate and organize the ideas in
writing descriptive text…………………………………………....(ELT)

19
Furthermore, for showing their judgment of their observation or research, the ELT
undergraduate students tend to use the ability patterns, like in:

(xxv) The students did not follow the player guide well.………….……..(ELT)
(xxvi) The failure was due to several factors, namely, (1) the students did not
completely understand the instructions proposed by the researchers, (2)
the confusion during the hand raising session……………………..(ELT)

Discussions
The frequency distribution of patterns of lexical bundles in Table 2
displays that from the total 50 patterns found in the three groups, 41 tokens (82%
of the total patterns) were found in ELT group, 6 tokens (12%) were found in
ELL-Linguistics and the rest 3 tokens (6%) were found in ELL-Literature group.
In other words, the difference of the frequency distribution between the three
groups is very big. The big difference was particularly influenced by the students’
disciplinary environment in which the ELT and ELL students have different
course set which must be taken and passed during their study.
The courses set in the three groups were very different regarding their
specialty or expertise. First, the ELT students’ courses set were mostly about the
teaching methods, such as TEFL (Teaching English as Foreign Language), EYL
(English for Young Learners), English Curriculum, etc. Second, the ELL-
Linguistics students’ courses set were mainly discussing about linguistics features
such as language play and language gender. Last, the ELL-Literature’ courses set
were mainly focused in literature features studies, such as film studies, song
analysis. Those courses set made the stereotype of their discussion so that they
have their own terms to express their idea in their writing. The fact that the study
environment influenced the production of the lexical bundles was in line with the
study results of Hyland (2008), Allen (2009), Dontcheva-Navratilova (2012),
Jalali, et al. (2015) and Ruan (2016). It was in line with the previous study since
the result shows that the three groups produce different lexical bundles patterns.
Another reason causing the difference in producing lexical bundles was
the students’ proficiency. The students’ proficiency cannot be separated with
courses that have been taken by the students. Many studies, such as Hyland
(2008), Allen (2009), Chen and Baker (2010), Djiwandono (2015), Ruan ( 2016),

20
and Novita and Kwary (2018), resulted that the production of the lexical bundles
patterns was influenced by the writers’ proficiency. Actually all the students were
in their senior year when conducting their thesis research; however, their
proficiency could not be only regarded by how long they study in university but
also their competence during their study. The competence might be seen from
their academic record value or known as GPA (grade point average) during their
study. Every student has their own GPA which tends to be different from one to
another so that each student has their own decision in using lexical bundles in
their writing or not. Students, who already know the benefit in using lexical
bundles, will likely to produce more lexical bundles.
Besides, the students’ preference in using particular patterns even lexical
bundles in their writing influences their production of lexical bundles in their
academic writing as well. The students’ preference in using the bundles was in
line with Conrad and Biber’s (2005) statement that anyone has their own way to
express their idea through words which is different from one to another due to the
fact that they already stored their vocabularies in their mind which equal to the
psycholinguistics’ perspective. In this study, the undergraduate students tend to
use NP and PP fragments and referential bundles patterns of lexical bundles in
their writing than the other two patterns. It shows that the students preferred to use
the NP and VP fragments and referential bundles patterns in their academic
writing.
In addition, the cases which were discussed in the three groups are also
different. The ELT undergraduate students are mainly discussing the teaching
methods in their researches. They discussed the benefit of using the method in
increasing their students’ skills. Besides, ELL has very broad scope of particular
cases being discussed in its thesis research, such as language play, language and
gender, ellipsis, etc. in Linguistics; and film study, epic story, song analysis, etc.
in Literature. The broad scope made the ELL students produce particular lexical
bundles related to their research but it was failed to be considered as lexical
bundles because of their low range and frequency co-occurrence of the lexical
bundles distribution. It was under the limit range employed in this current study.
Even the ELL-Linguistics and ELL - Literature students failed in producing

21
dependent clause fragment bundles although the ELT students were only able to
produce 2 types/tokens of dependent clause fragment.
The absence of particular bundles which in this study were the absence of
dependent clause fragment pattern of lexical bundles in both the ELL -Linguistics
and ELL-Literature groups reflected that the students had “insufficient level of
development of the rhetorical skills” and affected by their source language writing
conversion (Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2012). In other word, even the students were
already in their senior year, they still lack in developing lexical bundles in their
writing. It was due to their first language and competence in acquiring the lexical
bundles use. Some students tend to translate their idea from their first language
into English so that sometimes they do not pay attention appropriate deixis and
collocation in their writing. It is possible that when the students really understand
the benefits of using lexical bundles for bridging their clauses they probably
prefer to use the lexical bundles than other phrases.
The NP and PP fragments production which is higher than the VP
fragments and Dependent Clause fragments shows that the students were more
mastered in creating both noun phrase and prepositional phrase than verb phrase
and dependent clause. The NP and PP fragments, such as the result of the, in the
end of the, on the other hand and in this case the, were usually used to specify
topic/aspect of information within the study being investigated, it was similar with
the NP and PP fragments found in previous studies, such as in Conrad and Biber
(2005), Wei and Lei (2011), Dontcheva-Navratilova (2012), and Kwary, et al.
(2017), but dissimilar with the study result from Hyland’s (2008) study which
mainly mark existence and highlight quality.

Pedagogical Implication
Since “the teaching and learning of bundles still remains relatively
unexplored” (Eriksson, 2012) so that the pedagogical implication of the lexical
bundles found in the study was necessary. The pedagogical implication of the
lexical bundles found in the thesis articles can be noted as how the students finally
able to use the lexical bundles patterns in their academic writing. It can be
conducted by assigning the students to practice using particular bundles in

22
communicative writing activities by regarding the vocabulary building in the first
place (Pang, 2010; Wei & Lei, 2011; Jalali, et al., 2015; and Djiwandono, 2016).
Furthermore, the practical activities in using the lexical bundles can be
varied. Functionally, lexical bundles can be taught by providing the students with
a practical lexical bundles features’ meaning especially how they related to “the
discourse they will encounter in their particular courses” (Hyland, 2008) by listing
the commonly used lexical bundles in both writing and speaking (Chen & Baker,
2010). After the students understand the meaning of the lexical bundles and how
to use them in the discourse, teachers may assign the students to read some
sources to broaden their vocabulary of lexical bundles and list lexical bundles they
encountered in the sources they read or known as “reading comprehension”
activity (Pang, 2010). Then compare the lexical bundles they found in a small
group in the class (Novita & Kwary, 2018) to increase their understanding.

CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis conducted above, it can be concluded that the ELT
and ELL undergraduate students of English Department in Universitas Negeri
Malang use the functional lexical bundles patterns in dissimilar ways, yet similar
in terms of their structural. From the total 50 bundles patterns found in the study,
41 bundles were occurred in ELT group, 6 were occurred in ELL-Linguistics
group and the last 3 patterns were occurred in ELL-Literature group.
Structurally, the most frequently occurred lexical bundles in the study were
NP and PP fragments then followed by the VP fragments and Dependent Clause
fragments, respectively. The total NP and PP fragments occurred in the ELT
group were 31 patterns while ELL-Linguistics group has 4 patterns and ELL-
Literature group has only 2 patterns. Then, there were 6 patterns of VP fragments
found in ELT group whereas there was 1 pattern of VP fragments occurred in
each ELL-Linguistics and ELL-Literature groups. Last, the Dependent Clause
fragments were only occurred in ELT group with only 2 patterns in total.
Functionally, the ELT and ELL-Literature undergraduate students’
referential bundles patterns production were the highest from the 3 functional
patterns provided in the checklist with total 32 referential bundles patterns in ELT

23
group and 2 referential bundles patterns in ELL-Literature group. Besides, the
most frequently co-occurred referential bundles in ELT group referential bundles
were the result of the, the implementation of the, and teaching and learning
process with total frequency co-occurrence 56, 53, and 51 times respectively,
whereas the referential bundles patterns occurred in ELL-Literature group were at
the same time and is the one who with total frequency co-occurrence 13 times in
each patterns. The ELL-Linguistics group more likely produced discourse
organizers patterns than the other 2 patterns provided in the checklist with total 4
patterns of discourse organizers. The discourse organizers patterns which were
frequently co-occurred in the ELL-Linguistics group were on the other hand, and
in this case the with frequency co-occurrence 14 and 13 times respectively.
Furthermore, the stance bundles patterns were only occurred in ELT group with
total 4 types of bundles. The stance bundles patterns which were frequently co-
occurred in the ELT group were to improve students x and help the students to
with frequency co-occurrence 11 and 10 times respectively.

REFERENCES
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Language in the ALESS Learner Corpus. Komaba Journal of English
Education,1, 105-127.

Anthony, L. 2018. AntConc (Version 3.5.6) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan:

Waseda University. Available in http://www.laurenceanthony.net/.

Chen, Y., & Baker, P. 2010. Lexical Bundles in L1 and L2 Academic Writing.
Language Learning & Technology, 14(2), 30-49. Retrieved from
http://llt.msu.edu/vol14num2/chenbaker.pdf.

Conrad, S. M., & Biber, D. 2005. The Frequency and Use of Lexical Bundles in
Conversation and Academic Prose.pdf. Portland State University. PDX
Scholar. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783484604674.56.

Djiwandono, P. I. 2016. Lexical Richness in Academic Papers: A Comparison

Between Students’ and Lecturers’ Essays. Indonesian Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 5(2), 209-216. DOI: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v5i2.1345.

Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. 2012. Lexical Bundles in Academic Texts by Non-

Native Speakers. Brno Studies in English, 38(2), 37-55. DOI:
10.5817/BSE2012-2-3.

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Eriksson, A. 2012. Pedagogical perspectives on bundles: Teaching bundles to
doctoral students of biochemistry. Brno: Masaryk University Press, 195-
211.pdf. Retrieved from
http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/167649/local_167649.p
df.

Griffies, S. M. & Perrie, W. A. 2013. Publishing Connect: Elements of Style for

Writing Scientific Journal Articles.pdf. Retrieved from
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campus/files/Skills%20training/Elements_of_Style.pdf.

Heng, C. S., Kashiha, H., & Tan, H. 2014. Lexical Bundles: Facilitating
University “Talk” in Group Discussions. English Language Teaching,
7(4), 1-10. DOI: 10.5539/elt.v7n4pl.

Hyland, K. 2008. As Can be Seen: Lexical Bundles and Disciplinary Variation.

English For Specific Purposes, 27, 4-21. DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2007.06.001.

Jalali, Z.S., Moini, M., R., & Arani, M.A. 2015. Structural and Functional
Analysis of Lexical Bundles in Medical Research Articles: A Corpus-
Based Study. International Journal of Information Science and
Management, 13(1), 51-69. Retrieved from
https://ijism.ricest.ac.ir/index.php/ijism/article/viewFile/503/237.

Karadeniz, A. 2017. Cohesion and Coherence in Written Texts of Students of

Faculty of Education. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 5(2), 93-
99. DOI: 10.11114/jets.v5i2.1998.

Kwary, D. A., Ratri, D., & Artha, A.F. 2017. Lexical Bundles in Journal Articles
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Novita, H., & Kwary, D. A. 2018. Comparing the Use of Lexical Bundles in
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Ruan, Z. 2016. Lexical Bundles in Chinese Undergraduate Academic Writing at
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26
APPENDICES
Appendix 1
Structural Patterns of Lexical Bundles Guideline (Heng, et al., 2014)
Structural categories
Lexical bundles which include
verb phrase fragments
Lexical bundles which include
dependent clause fragments
Lexical bundles which include
noun phrase and prepositional
phrase fragments
Sub-categories Sample bundles
1.a 1st/2nd person pronoun + VP I’m not going to
fragment
1.b 3rd person pronoun + VP and this is a
fragment
1.c discourse marker + VP I mean I don’t
fragment
1.d Verb phrase (with non-passive have a lot of
verb)
1.e Verb phrase (with passive is based on the
verb)
1.f yes-no question fragments are you going to
1.g WH-question fragments what do you think
2.a 1st/2nd person pronoun + I want you to
dependent clause fragments
2.b WH-clause fragments when we get to
2.c If-clause fragments if we look at
2.d to-clause fragment to be able to
2.e That-clause fragment that this is a
3.a noun phrase with of-phrase one of the things
fragment
3.b noun phrase with other post- the way in which
modifier fragment
3.c other noun phrase expressions a little bit more
3.d prepositional phrase at the end of
expressions
3.e comparative expression as well as the
27
Appendix 2
Functional Patterns of Lexical Bundles Guideline (Heng, et al., 2014)
Functional categories Sub-categories Sample bundles
1. Stance bundles 1.a epistemic stance the fact that the
1.b attitudinal/modality stance
1.b.1 desire I want you to
1.b.2 obligation/directive it is important to
1.b.3 intention/prediction we are going to
1.b.4 ability to be able to

2. Discourse organizers 2.a topic introduction in this chapter we

2.b topic elaboration/clarification on the other hand

3. Referential bundles 2.c identification/focus one of the things

2.d imprecision or something like
that
2.e specification of attributes
2.e.1 quantity specification a little bit of
3.a tangible framing in the form of
3.b intangible framing on the basis of
3.c time/ place/ text reference
3.c.1 place reference in the United States
3.c.2 time reference at the same time
3.c.3 text-deixis as shown in table
3.c.4 multi-functional reference in the middle of

28