A Comparative Genre Analysis of the Conclusion Section of Research Articles written by Native and Non-native English Speakers in the field of Applied Linguistics

The main purpose of this study was to expand our awareness of the rhetorical move structure used in the conclusion section of research articles through comparing the articles written by Persian native speakers (PNS) and English nativespeakers (ENS). To do so, the conclusion section of 20 research articles published by Persian native speakers and 20research articles published by English native speakers both written in English and in the field of applied linguistics wereselected. Having examined different frameworks, Yang and Allison‟s (2003) framework was selected to analyzedifferent moves and steps utilized in the two corpora. The findings revealed that all three moves proposed in this model occurred in both corpora with some similarities and some differences in their frequency of occurrence. Move 1(summarizing the study) was the most highly used move in both corpora. However, different steps in move 2 and 3occurred with different frequencies. The move structure followed by PNS varied more than the ones followed by ENS.Therefore, it can be concluded that ENS use more common frameworks in writing academic research articles than PNS. The findings of this study can have implications in the teaching and learning of English Academic writing since it can give a better understanding of the corresponding genre.

Keywords:

genre analysis , move analysis , conclusion section , applied linguistics