Multi-word expressions are formulaic language universals with arbitrary and idiosyncratic collocations. Their usage and mastery are required of learners of a second language in achieving naturalness. However, despite the importance of multi-word expressions to mastering a second language, their syntactic architecture and colligational possibilities have received little attention in English language teaching (ELT). This study examined lexical bundles, a type of multi-word expressions, to understand their structure and co-occurrence possibilities with other syntactic elements. It was aided by an automated frequency-driven approach using two corpora, the British component of the British National Corpus – a first language (L1) corpus – and a purpose-built Nigerian Media Discourse corpus – a second language (L2) corpus. Two items of lexical analysis software were used to extract three-word lexical bundles with a minimum of 50 frequencies per corpus. The syntactic structures of the identified lexical bundles were determined, and their in-corpus usages were analysed for their colligational characteristics. Results showed that both corpora had instances of general and genre-specific lexical bundles (LBs) with varying frequencies. Five categories of lexical bundles with different structural patterns and peculiar colligational characteristics were identified in the study. Since lexical bundles are more frequently found in both L1–L2 texts, mastering how they are used will further enhance the teaching of English as a second language. The teaching of lexical bundles as a multi-word expression is therefore recommended in ELT as a way of enhancing learners’ proficiency and naturalness in English.

多词表达是具有任意和特殊搭配的公式化语言普遍性。他们的使用和掌握是第二语言学习者实现自然性所必需的。然而，尽管多词表达对掌握第二语言很重要，但它们的句法结构和拼写可能性在英语教学 (ELT) 中却很少受到关注。这项研究检查了词汇束，一种多词表达，以了解它们的结构和与其他句法元素共现的可能性。它得到了使用两个语料库的自动频率驱动方法的帮助，即英国国家语料库的英国部分——第一语言 (L1) 语料库——和专门构建的尼日利亚媒体话语语料库——第二语言 (L2) 语料库。使用两项词汇分析软件提取每个语料库至少有 50 个频率的三词词汇包。确定了已识别词汇束的句法结构，并分析了它们在语料库中的用法以了解它们的拼写特征。结果表明，两个语料库都有频率不同的通用和特定类型词汇束（LBs）的实例。该研究确定了五类具有不同结构模式和特殊合规特征的词汇束。由于词汇包在 L1-L2 文本中更常见，掌握它们的使用方式将进一步加强英语作为第二语言的教学。