Genre Analysis Of Conclusion Sections Of Research Articles In Applied Linguistics: A Corpus-based Research

The conclusion section is a fundamental component of a research article. However, genre analysison the conclusion sections in research articles is rare, with the comparative study being much less. Thepresent study follows ESP (English for Specific Purposes) genre analysis, and it tries to explore the genericstructure of the conclusion sections in research articles, and it also tries to conduct a comparative study ofthe conclusion sections in research articles in the discipline of applied linguistics written by Chinese andEnglish native speakers in terms of generic structure and linguistic features. All research articles issued inChinese Journal of Applied Linguistics from2009to2010have been collected. And90conclusions writtenby Chinese scholars have been selected to establish a corpus. Similarly, the research articles issued inApplied Linguistics from2005to2010have been collected. Among them30conclusions written byEnglish native speakers have been selected to build another corpus. Based on Yang&Allison’s (2003)study, the present study has proposed a new generic structure model for the conclusion sections of researcharticles, and has done a comparative analysis of the move frequency, modal verbs, tense, and first personpronoun in the two corpora.The research results show that the conclusion sections in research articles in the discipline of appliedlinguistics consist of five moves, namely,“Background information”,“Summarizing the study”,“Explaining results”,“Evaluating the study”,“Deductions from the study”. The four stable moves inChinese scholars’ conclusions are:“Summarizing the study”,“Explaining results”,“Evaluating the study”,“Deductions from the study”. While the three stable moves in English native scholars’ conclusions are:“Summarizing the study”,“Explaining results”,“Deductions from the study”. Move4: Evaluating thestudy occurs more often in Chinese scholars’ conclusions. As for the linguistic features, the English native scholars tend to use longer and more complex sentences, and they use more academic words in theconclusion sections. Precisely, with regard to the usage of modal verbs, the Chinese scholars tend tooveruse the word “should”, but less use the two words:“may” and “would”. The overused word “should”is usually used in Move5: Deductions from the study, which weakens the communicative function of thismove. In terms of the usage of tense, the most favourable one is simple present. In Move2: Summarizingthe study, the Chinese scholars mainly use simple present and simple past tense, while the English nativescholars use simple present and present perfective tense. As for the first person pronoun, the Chinesescholars tend to use less than the English native scholars. For both of them, the favorites are the firstperson plural pronouns.The present study enriches the genre analysis of conclusion sections in research articles. Thefindings of the present study may have some pedagogical implications for academic writing courses, andmay help Chinese scholars write effective conclusions in research articles in the discipline of appliedlinguistics.