The Lexical Bundles and Discourse Markers Between Bilingual and Monolingual Teachers’ Talk: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

In classroom discourses, teachers’ linguistic choices play critical roles in teacher-student interaction and shape students’ language development. This corpus-based study examined and compared the use of lexical bundles (LBs) and discourse markers (DMs) in classroom talk of English monolingual and English-Chinese bilingual teachers. While prior research has explored the roles of teachers’ LBs and DMs in supporting classroom communication and student language development, few studies have employed corpus-based methods to directly compare monolingual and bilingual teachers discourse. Addressing this gap, we compiled and analyzed a corpus of authentic classroom recordings, extracting key LBs and DMs using AntConc. Finding indicated that both teachers rely heavily on stance expression; however, the bilingual teacher demonstrated a greater use of classroom directives and politeness strategies. We discuss potential linguistic and sociocultural explanations for these patterns and consider implications for teacher education and bilingual pedagogy.