Lexical Frames in L2 Writing Development: A Longitudinal Study

Lexical frames are fixed, high-frequency sequences of function words, with free slots filled by lexical words (e.g., the * of the, in the * of). Most existing research on lexical frames focuses on the lexical words as the variable component, rather than on the function words; very little research has considered English learners’ grammatical errors with these “fixed” elements of lexical frames. This study investigates one EFL learner’s use of and accuracy with recurrent word sequences and lexical frames in terms of English articles over time, using longitudinal data of the academic texts from her high school and online university classes. The findings show that the learner has come to use more types of lexical frames, which typical of academic prose. In addition, the learner made more article errors in lexical frames in high school, which suggests the need for research to take account of such errors, rather than treating function words in L2 lexical frames as fixed. The study concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications, including the effects of the shift from face-to-face to online courses at the university level.