New Perspectives in Science Education

Corpus-based research has demonstrated that academic writing is inherently phraseological, with multi-word sequences such as lexical bundles functioning as “building blocks of discourse” (Biber et al., 2004, p. 400). At the same time, research shows that non-native university-level students enrolled in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses often have a solid command of English grammar and vocabulary, yet many continue to face challenges in the use of recurrent word combinations (Flowerdew, 2015, p. 469). Using a corpus linguistics methodology, this study analyzes a corpus of Romanian university student writing in English from the field of Engineering to identify recurrent phraseological patterns that characterize non-native engineering writing. Findings show that Engineering writing is typically practical and procedural, prioritizing accurate descriptions of computational and technical processes over extended argumentation. Drawing on these findings, the paper proposes a set of data-driven learning (DDL) activities specifically designed to support the development of phraseological competence in Engineering ESP writing by engaging learners in the direct exploration of authentic language use captured in corpora (Cotos, 2017, p. 252). The proposed activities are designed for use with a corpus of expert multidisciplinary academic writing, EXPRES (Chitez et al., 2022), available through a user-friendly interface that supports classroom implementation. The paper argues that combining learner corpus analysis with structured DDL tasks offers a practical approach to teaching effective phrase use in specialized academic writing.

Keywords: English for Specific Purposes, Engineering, academic writing

REFERENCES

[1] Flowerdew, L. (2015). Learner corpora and language for academic and specific purposes. In F. Meunier, G. Gilquin, & S. Granger (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research (pp. 465–484). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649414.021

[2] Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at …: Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371–405. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.3.371

[3] Chitez, M., Mureșan, V., Rogobete, R., & Dincă, A. (2022). Corpus of Expert Writing in Romanian and English (EXPRES) [Data set]. West University of Timișoara. https://expres-corpus.org/​