Lexical Bundles in the Korean EFL Teacher Talk Corpus: A Comparison Between Non-native and Native English Teachers

The present study investigates the use of lexical bundles in Korean EFL teacher talk. In particular, it examines the quantitative and qualitative features of lexical bundles in a native and non-native teachers' classroom talk corpus. The corpus of the study consists of a total of 247,398 words complied through 62 hours of recording of EFL classes. The key lexical bundles of the study were extracted using WordSmith 6.0 to conduct frequency, functional and structural analyses. The results of the frequency analysis showed the non-native English teachers' repeated use of a limited number of lexical bundles which inflated the total number of usages. The functional analysis of the lexical bundles showed that the non-native English teachers relied heavily on a narrow range of functional categories, e.g., stance expressions and referential expressions. Further, the results of the functional analysis clearly indicate that the EFL teacher corpus possesses certain repetitive tendencies in both conversational and academic discourse. The examination of the over-,exclusive, and under-use of lexical bundles demonstrates that not only quantitative but also qualitative differences exist in lexical bundle preferences between the native and the nonnative teachers.