A Genre study of Cross-gender and Cross-cultural variations in IELTS Essays

Writing essays and articles has long been considered as a crucial mode of written discourse which is a difficult type of text for students, especially for English as foreign language (EFL) learners. Writing essays also makes up a significant part of the International English Language Test System (IELTS), as one of the most reputable English tests that is used to assess the language proficiency of those intending to study or work in an English speaking context. This study offers a contrastive genre analysis of the essays written by male and female, and native and non-native writers in IELTS task 2 essay tests. The foremost purpose of the study is to discover whether native and non-native writers utilized the same rhetorical techniques in composing IELTS essays. The study Grounded on Swales’ (1990) CARS genre move framework, this research proposed a modified model of Swales’ (1990) CARS genre move framework for the argumentative essays to adjust for the observed differences. The findings show some variations between male and female, native and non-native writers in writing these IELTS essays. The article has significant theoretical and pedagogical implications for teachers, learners, material developers, and syllabus designers.