The impact of the explicit instruction of lexical bundles on academic writing skills of turkish EFL learners

The aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of the explicit instruction of lexical bundles through noticing, retrieval and generative activities on academic writing of Turkish EFL students and to reveal participants' opinions on this treatment.The participants of the study were 30 Turkish EFL learners enrolled in School of Foreign Languages at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University. Both quantitative and qualitative instruments were used in the study.The study includes a within group time series design in which participants were involved in one treatment group. The quantitative data were collected through pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test scores of multiple choice test (for measuring receptive knowledge), c-test (for measuring controlled productive knowledge) and argumentative paragraphs (for measuring uncontrolled productive knowledge). The qualitative data were collected through questionnaire including two sections; fifteen closed-ended and three open-ended questions.The results of the study found out that explicit instruction of lexical bundles through noticing, retrieval and generative activities had a significant effect both on achievement and retention of receptive lexical bundle knowledge, and on achievement and retention of productive lexical bundle incontrolled and uncontrolled situations. However, the comparison of immediate post-test and delayed post-test scores of the productive knowledge of lexical bundles in uncontrolled situation showed that there was a significantly decrease in the retention of the participants. The results of the qualitative part of the study showed that participants highly benefited from this treatment, which helped them improve their academic writing quality by using the target lexical bundles. Moreover, after the treatment, they were more willing to use the target bundles in their writing. Keywords: Lexical bundles, Academic writing, Explicit instruction, Noticing,Retrieval and generative activities.