LEXICAL BUNDLES IN L2 COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO ORAL AND WRITTEN SKILLS

This article examines the role of lexical bundles in advanced L2 competence development as regards oral and written skills, particularly in translator and interpreter education. As irregular chunks of language that are statistically recurrent but not necessarily lexically or grammatically meaningful, lexical bundles can shed light on formulae, frequent nominal, verbal and prepositional phrases, etc., which may help widen the scope of the linguistic education of translators-to-be. Based on the plurilingual competence advocated by the CEFRL, and placing the relevant emphasis on L1-L2 contrast and interaction, a corpus-based approach can enhance L2 competence development in a more specific, sensitive and conscious way and might help translation students feel resolute and empowered to manage a number of real-life translation and interpreting problems.