Rhetorical Structures in Academic Research Writing by Non- Native Writers

Abstract

<p>Writers of research articles are expected to present research information in a structured manner by following a certain rhetorical patterns determined by the discourse community. Failures to keep to the writing standard and rhetorical pattern are likely to lower the acceptance rate. While producing a research article is understandably a complex task, it is even more difficult if one is writing in his or her second or third language. Even if grammatical mistakes can be ironed out by a language editor, researchers are on their own when it comes to rhetorical presentation of their research ideas. The available research writing guidelines constructed in the native speaker context often fall short in addressing rhetorical aspects related to cultural issues that have been known to influence most non native English (NNE) writings. Motivated by the complexity of rhetorical presentation in research articles and the problems on writing research articles by NNE writers, this paper is aimed to explore the rhetorical moves used by the Malaysian writers in the introduction section of Computer Science research articles for journal publication. CARS model (Swales, 2004) is used to analyze the rhetorical moves in the introduction section of Computer Science research articles by the Malaysian writers. The study begins with a corpus compilation of five research articles (RA) by the writers followed by move analysis use in the CARS model (Swales, 2004) was conducted to analyze the articles. The analysis revealed that majority of the writers adopted most of the rhetorical strategies in Swales model (2004). The paper concludes that CARS model is suitable in identifying the rhetorical moves in the RA by Malaysian writers.</p

Non-Native Speakers’ Rhetorical Commonalities in Writing Script Introduction Section

“…Sheldon (2011) uses the model in Figure 2 to examine the rhetorical differences in Introduction of the research article by English L1, L2, and Castilian Spanish L1. Suryani et al (2014) also use that model toward English written text by Malaysian. Then, Khamkhien (2015) also conducts the research by using this model toward Thai journal.…”

Rhetorical Moves in the Introductions of Islam-Related Research Articles

“…With regard to the writer's background, there are a number of studies focusing on the difference of rhetorical moves in RAIs parts with particular concerns for Native Speaker (NS) and Non-Native Speaker (NNS) writers (see Khany & Tazik, 2010;Sheldon, 2011;Agrawal 2015). There are also studies focusing on only NNS writing (see Ahamad & Yusof , 2012;Safnil, 2013;Chahal, 2014;Suryani et. al, 2014); however, there seems to be a less number of studies focusing on only NS writing (see Samraj, 2002).…”

Physical and Topical Structures of Manpower Discourse: A Contrastive Rhetoric Analysis in Southeast Asia

“…In a study of academic research writing by non-native writers in Malaysia, Suryani et al (2014) explored the rhetorical moves used by Malaysian writers in the introduction section of Computer Science research articles (henceforth RA) for journal publication. Using the Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model by Swales (2004), they found that, in battling against the difficulty of meeting academic writing expectations of native speakers of English, a majority of Malaysian writers adopted most of the rhetorical strategies in Swales (2004), which model native English speakers" rhetorical presentation of research ideas.…”

“…From an analysis of introductions of RA in Suryani et al (2014), Morales (2012) geared her analysis toward the conclusion section of RA written by Filipino and Japanese writers. Her study identified organizational and compulsory moves from the two writing cultures and detected intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of Filipino and Japanese RA authors.…”

“…Leki (1991, p. 126) advanced one of two main approaches to CR which respond to the need to identify research gap and create research space and which has particular relation to the present study: "to examine L1 texts from different cultures, often professional, and published work, written for native speakers, and the rhetorical contexts in which these texts are inscribed…" Volume 15 (1), February 2015(http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2015-1501 ISSN: Interestingly, Leki"s (1991) observation has had some confirmation by way of looking at how recent CR studies have departed from L2 student writing and dealt with other genres and subgenres of writing not only in L1 but also in L2, altogether extending the notion of cultural influences to written discourse. At present, the literature on CR includes investigations that focus on academic research writing (Suryani et al, 2014), research articles (Morales, 2012), conference abstracts (Fartousi & Dumanig, 2012), news leads, stories and editorials (Scollon, 2000;Dumanig et al, 2009;Mercado, 2009), L2 professional writing (Thatcher, 2000;Pariña, 2010), rhetorics and communication media (Thatcher, 2004), business and technical writing (Woolever, 2001), and workplace discourse (Dautermann, 1993;Kleimann, 1993) among others.…”