서강대학교

초록/요약

The present study investigates the genre of Abstracts for research papers written by experts (internationally published scholars) and novices (graduate students). Genre analysis is pedagogically motivated to provide academic writers with the tools to recognize structural features occurring in a collection of texts meant to fulfill specific communicative purposes. Working within a branch of genre analysis known as move analysis, this study examines the occurrence of moves or rhetorical units in the text. The research questions focus on (1) the amount of writing that makes up the Abstract; (2) what moves are used to complete the Abstract; and (3) how each move is realized in the expert and novice texts. The primary data consist of English applied linguistics and language teaching/learning Abstracts from 30 Korean master’s (MA) theses, 30 Korean doctoral (PhD) dissertations, and 30 published research articles. Four move units for research paper Abstracts consisting of the Introduction (I), Methods (M), Results (R), and Discussion (D) are described quantitatively in terms of their frequencies, and also qualitatively in terms of their overall relevance in actual samples of data. The findings reveal important similarities and differences between expert and novice writing. While all four moves generally occurred across the data, their actual manifestations in the expert texts differed from the features noted in the novice texts. Variations in terms of the length of each move revealed longer I and M-moves in the expert data, while typically longer R-moves were observed in the novice texts. The data also showed group-specific variations in the type of content presented particularly within the I and D-moves. The discussion of these findings contributes to current knowledge in academic writing particularly on two main points. On the level of discourse, the emerging structural descriptions from the data can be used to better understand how a specific move is handled differently by expert and novice writers. On a textual level, the key structural features drawn from the data can be used to analytically demonstrate the writers’ works and accomplishments in making a current move crucial to the development of the entire text or at least relevant to the prior or subsequent moves.