Home / Regular Issue / JTAS Vol. 25 (1) Mar. 2017 / JSSH-1390-2015

 

Comparing Structural and Functional Lexical Bundles in MUET Reading Test

Christina Ong Sook Beng and Yuen Chee Keong

Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 25, Issue 1, March 2017

Keywords: Lexical bundles (LB), MUET, reading test, reading text, structural and functional categories

Published on: 29 Mar 2017

This study aims at identifying the structural and functional types of lexical bundles (LBs) used in the reading passages of Malaysian University English Test (MUET). A specialised corpus of MUET reading passages was built. The passages were categorised into five main disciplines namely Applied Science, Pure Science, Business, Humanities and Social Science. Using WordSmith Tools version 5, the lists of frequently occurring LBs in all the five disciplines were generated. They were then sorted according to Biber, Conrad and Cortes' (2004) Structural Taxonomy and Hyland's (2008) Functional Taxonomy. Chi-square test and Fisher's exact test were adopted to determine the association between the structural and functional categories of the five disciplines. The results revealed that the number of LBs across the structural and functional categories in the five disciplines differed significantly. However, a strong association was observed between the two categories in all five disciplines where LBs incorporating noun phrases (NPs) usually performed research-oriented function whereas LBs incorporating dependent clauses (DCs) were strongly bound to text-oriented function. LBs incorporating verb phrases (VPs) on the contrary were linked to participant-oriented functions as well as other types of functions. Significant association was identified between the categories in all the disciplines. The two additional categories encompassing various structures of LBs and other functions not listed in Biber et al.'s (2004) Structural Taxonomy and Hyland's (2008) Functional Taxonomy respectively were also significantly associated. The key finding of the study was that structural categories and discourse functions are closely interrelated.

ISSN 1511-3701

e-ISSN 2231-8542

Article ID

JSSH-1390-2015

Download Full Article PDF

Share this article

Recent Articles