A Contrastive Generic Analysis of Thesis Abstracts of TEFL and TPSOL

The notion of genre and its application in language teaching and learning has been given increasing attention in the past decades. Abstracts are an important area of inquiry in genre analysis. Therefore, identification and mastery of textual and rhetorical structures of abstracts can be beneficial. The present study sought to analyze the rhetorical structure of thesis abstracts in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and TPSOL (Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages). To this end, 80 abstracts from the two disciplines (40 abstracts from each discipline) were chosen from among the theses submitted between the years 2008 to 2013 at Allameh Tabataba"i University. Following Hyland"s (2000) five-move model, the textual organization and rhetorical structure of each abstract were analyzed. The findings revealed generic variations across the two disciplines, indicating the obligatory and common moves in the structure of abstracts. TPSOL abstracts displayed a stronger tendency to omit the conclusion move (M5) in contrast to TEFL abstracts in which M5 was considered a fundamental and significant move. Another striking difference emerged in terms of patterns of reordering and repetition of some moves which appeared among some TPSOL abstracts only. It can be concluded that TEFL abstracts are more consistent with the international norms and genre of academic writing. The findings have pedagogical implications for students, ESP instructors, materials developers, and syllabus designers, and provide suggestions for further research.