ABSTRACT
As children progress through elementary school, they expand their linguistic resources for making meaning in writing. In the primary grades, instruction is focused on early literacy skills, including mapping phonemes to lexemes, printing, and spelling. Through writing instruction and experience with diverse tasks, learners become increasingly aware of the lexico-grammatical resources available when writing for specific purposes. This chapter explores a collection of texts written by students in grades 3 to 6 from diverse linguistic backgrounds. It uses corpus-based methods to extract lexical bundles learners used in their writing in response to a variety of tasks. The chapter analyzes the discourse functions that these bundles serve. Finally, it compares the use of lexical bundles across grades, first languages, and writing task types to gain insights into learners’ writing development.
