Most scholars have studied written discourse both in academic and professional setting within the scope of genre-based analysis, which demonstrate an increase interest in analysing the rhetorical structure of written texts. Conversely, there is a dearth of research in Malaysia that explains the rhetorical structure of argumentative essays from a genre analysis perspective. This paper introduces a genre-based corpus analysis using a compiled representative corpus of the argumentative essay for developing a rhetorical structure, also known as , an analytical framework to enhance the students’ writing skills. The compiled representative corpus was consisted of 24 argumentative essays. As a qualitative study, a corpus–based analysis is employed to explore the distinguished move patterns used in the argumentative essays. Using Hyland’s (1990) 11 move pattern as an analytical framework of the argumentative essay, this study revealed a list of moves and steps which were signaled by the linguistic features. Consequently, there were altogether 9 moves and 14 steps were identified in the three stages, namely Introduction, Argument and Conclusion. However, the moves used by the pre-university students in the study did vary from the model as new moves were marked in each stage. Pedagogically, the findings of this study were expected to guide in developing a framework for writing skills.
Argumentative writing has been regarded as an essential form of written discourse in Malaysia, specifically in Malaysian University English Test (MUET). However, limited research has been conducted on the MUET argumentative essay writing component for pre-university students. The purpose of this preliminary study is to investigate a compiled representative learner corpus to conduct an analysis of the linguistic features; lexical verbs used in Band 3 and Band 5 argumentative essays produced by students of a pre-university college in Malaysia. Subsequently, the lexical verbs utilized in the respective essays were compared. As a descriptive analysis and corpus-based study, the use of lexical verb forms was examined, reflecting the learners' knowledge of applying this linguistic constituent into their written essays. The method applied in the analysis is a computer-based learner corpus analysis. Results revealed that Band 5 essays contained more '-ing' participle (VVG) form, whereas Band 3 essays revealed the use of more past participle (VVN) form. Surprisingly, both groups avoided the base form of lexical verb (VVO). The pedagogical implications based on the results of the study were proposed and the ideas for future research were discussed.
Genre analysis has been frequently employed in Malaysia to analyse undergraduate and postgraduate target discourse, particularly research articles and abstracts. On the other hand, just a few studies have been done on argumentative essays written by pre-university students taking the Malaysian University English Test (MUET). The goal of this study is to examine rhetorical moves of the argument stage in 60 argumentative essays. The major instrument utilised to assess the rhetorical structure in the assembled essays was a compiled representative corpus of argumentative essays, COMWArE. The identification of rhetorical moves was investigated using BCU approach, which is aided by a computer-assisted corpus analysis (CACA). In addition, two subject matter experts were interviewed in order to gain insider perspectives. The analysis reveals that the argument stage in argumentative essays consists of three moves and five steps. The findings of the study lend itself to providing a representative template of rhetorical organisation for organising argument stage in producing an argumentative essay. Pedagogically, this rhetorical structure is useful particularly to novice writers to better understand how argument stage is produced.
The need to focus future education according to the actual needs of the learners can be realized by conducting a well-placed research within the prospective requirements of its context. However, evaluating and accessing the actual linguistics needs of learners is undeniably a challenging undertaking. This paper presents steps taken to conduct a descriptive and a corpus-based study. It explored the written essays produced by ESL learners. The areas of investigation involved examining the strategies used by the language learners while preparing the essays, the frequency of part-of-speech (POS) used in the essays and sentence level syntactical analysis of the most frequently used POS. The methodology applied is fundamental as it tends to investigate the linguistic constituents in the compiled corpus. Computer-based syntactical studies are limited as it requires hard work, long hours and complex analytic method of describing the findings. In contrast, this article demonstrated an uncomplicated method of analysis and also encourages the use of existing part-of speech (POS) tagging software available online. The findings show that the students are using mainly the past participle form of the lexical verb (VVN) when preparing the written essays. As recommendations for future research, this paper proposes structural linguistics investigations such as frequency analyses, sentence level syntactical analyses (SLSA), examining the distributional patterns of sentence level linguistic structural patterns and subject-verb agreement analyses reflecting the writers' knowledge of applying their grammatical linguistics knowledge into their written output be conducted within various contexts where language is used.
In Malaysia, the framework of genre analysis has been widely used for analyzing undergraduates and postgraduates target discourse, particularly research articles and theses. Conversely, limited studies have been conducted on argumentative essays produced by preuniversity students who are sitting for Malaysian University English Test (MUET). This study is aimed at analyzing the introductory paragraphs of 14 argumentative essays using move analysis. For this purpose, a compiled representative corpus of argumentative essays was used as a main instrument to examine the rhetorical moves in the compiled essays. As a corpus-based study, the identification of rhetorical moves was examined via a computerassisted corpus analysis (CACA). The findings of this preliminary study revealed that there were 3 moves and 9 steps identified in the compiled introductory paragraphs. The pedagogical implications based on the results of the study were proposed and the ideas for future research were discussed.
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