Genre Analysis of Research Article Abstracts in Language Education and Acquisition Research

Abstract

Despite the fact that a number of studies have been investigated on different sections of Research Articles (RAs) in applied linguistics and language education, scant attention has been paid to the abstracts published in some leading journals in language education in Thailand. To fill the gap, this paper analyses the move structure and the micro structure of article abstracts in language education and acquisition published in the leading journal in language education and acquisition in Thailand. The data employed in this paper consists of sixteen abstracts published in the aforementioned journals. Importantly, Hyland’s (2000) five-move framework and Swales and Feak’s (2009) model are used as a framework for analysis. The findings revealed that two moves (purpose and product) are most-frequently included in the abstracts, while the other three moves (introduction, method, and conclusion) are not included in some abstracts. Concerning the variables, most of the abstracts contain less than 150 words, use present verbs and some acronyms whereas only few abstracts contain citations and 1^st person pronouns. This study will be beneficial for novice scholars as it helps them produce academic papers following the norms and develop research writing skills within the field of language education and language acquisition.