Writing scientific articles with the support of key lexical bundles: a corpus-driven study in the area of health sciences

ABSTRACT English is the lingua franca in academic settings. Publishing in this language enhances the spread of scientific knowledge and citations. Hence, we intend to contribute to increase the impact of Brazilian scientific production by proposing pedagogical resources based on linguistic patterns obtained with a corpus-driven approach. Through an empirical analysis of a corpus of academic articles published in indexed journals, and using Corpus Linguistics principles, we aim to identify key lexical bundles from the introduction section of articles in the area of health sciences, classify these bundles according to their communicative function and suggest pedagogical applications for the collected data aimed at writing academic articles. The data, collected with a textual analysis tool (Sketch Engine), show that (i) key lexical bundles concentrate in certain movements and steps of the section under study; and (ii) units can be grouped according to the communicative functions identified in the same step and, hence, a lexical frame is built to be used in the construction of pedagogical resources.