Move Analysis of the Literature Review Chapters in Taiwanese Graduate Students’ TESOL Theses and Dissertations

Literature Review (LR) is essential in research articles (RAs) but EFL learners often find writing LR a difficult task (e.g., [1]; [2]; [3]; [4]). Among the often-reported difficulties, how to organize an LR chapter is one of the main challenges (e.g., [5]; [6]). This paper thus aims to examine the rhetorical structures of the LR chapters in both master’s theses and doctoral dissertations written by the EFL learners in Taiwan. The purpose is to investigate how the authors organize the LR chapters in terms of move and step ([7]; [8, 9]) and if experiences of writing RAs have impacts on the use of move, i.e., on how the EAP writers organize the rhetorical structures of LR chapters. The findings of examining 20 master’s thesis and 20 doctoral dissertation LR chapters in the field of TESOL show the two groups of authors organized the LR chapters in a similar way. We claim that the master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation authors acquired the rhetorical structures and writing conventions of the TESOL discourse community through instructions, training, and experiences. The findings provide further supports to the notions of discourse community and shared writing conventions and to the needs of including the genre knowledge in EAP learners’ writing curriculum.