| Since 1980s, two topics were paid much attention to in the field of linguistics research: the genre and genre analysis. References concerning genre analysis of various discourses emerge one after another. More and more scholars conducted their research on genre analysis of various sections of academic papers, such as the introduction, conclusion as well as the abstract of academic papers. However, limited references concerning genre analysis of other sections of academic papers have been found, especially of the Discussion section. Although Discussion section is an important part of theses or research articles, many scholars fail to pay much attention to this field. Furthermore, studies on comparative genre analysis of Discussion sections of research articles in Chinese and International English academic journals are few.Sixty articles were selected for analysis, 30 from an English journal published in China: Teaching English in China and 30 from International English academic journals: English Language Teaching, Applied Linguistics and Language. Then two databases were established. First of all, a pilot study was conducted through randomly choosing 15 Discussion sections from each database and formed a kind of generic structure of English Discussion sections. This thesis adopted Swales'(1990) Move-Step analysis approach and combined Yang & Allison (2003), Hopkins & Dudley-Evans'(1987) and Holmes'(1997) move pattern to analyze Discussion sections in the two databases. After that, independent samples T-test were used. Results reveal that there are similarities and differences in Discussion sections between the two databases.The similarities are presented as follows:Firstly, as to the length and paragraph number of Discussion sections, there is no significant difference between the two databases. Secondly, as to the generic structures of Discussion sections, the Result move appears most frequently than any other move in the two databases and the Result move is obligatory in the two databases.The differences are shown as follows:Firstly, as far as the sentence number is concerned, the sentence number of Discussion sections in English journals written by English writers is larger than that in the English journal written by Chinese writers.Secondly, as far as a generic structure is concerned, Discussion sections in English journals written by English writers contain a variety of moves and steps while Chinese writers favor only one move pattern.The results obtained from this study have important contributions on writing the Discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics. At the same time, the results can help foreign English teachers cultivate the students'awareness of genre and instruct them to write Discussion sections on the basis of understanding genre analysis. |
