Application of Native Speaker Models for Identifying Deviations in Rhetorical Moves in Non-native Speaker Manuscripts

Explicit teaching of generic conventions of a text genre, usually extracted from native-speaker (NS) manuscripts, has long been emphasized in the teaching of Academic Writing inEnglish for Specific Purposes (henceforthESP) classes, both in theory and practice. While consciousness-raising about rhetorical structure can be instrumental to non-native speakers(NNS), it has to be admitted that most works done in the field of ESP have tended to focus almost exclusively on native-speaker (NS) productions, giving scant attention to non-native speaker (NNS) manuscripts. That is, having outlined established norms for good writing on the basis of NS productions, few have been inclined to provide a descriptive account of NNS attempts at trying to produce a research article (RA) in English. That is what we have tried to do in the present research.
We randomly selected 20 RAs in dentistry and used two well-established models for results and discussion sections to try to describe the move structure of these articles and show the points of divergence from the established norms.
The results pointed to significant divergences that could seriously compromise the quality of an RA.
It is believed that the insights gained on the deviations in NNS manuscripts could prove very useful in designing syllabi for ESP classes.