Article
A Move Analysis of Problem-Solution Discourse: A Pedagogical Guide for Opinion and Academic Writing
Arab World English Journal
(2018)
Abstract
Knowledge about move is fundamental to language learning which prepares students and writing practitioners to understand the natures and the organization of a certain discourse and genre. Teachers, consequently, need to familiarize students with a framework of moves that enable them to produce well written work. Consequently, the author conducted a genre analysis on a corpus of 50 problem-solution (PS) articles in the opinion columns of two online newspapers to identify the move characteristics and the move structureof the problem-solution discourse in the genre.The study used a genre analysis methodology relying on Hoey (1983)’sframework of rhetorical organization for the problem-solution discourse. The findings have implications for the writing instruction. They include a set of move features which is a practical guide and a ready-made template for writing the problem-solution discourse. The findings also show that the Problem move is the nucleus move followed by the Response move.Regarding the move structure, the study unfolds that the Problem move and the Response moves are moves that are most used to start and to end the articles, respectively. The identification of move characteristics and move structure provides language learners, writing practitioners, and especially English language teachers with empirical results beneficial for a writing practice and for material designs.
Keywords
- content-based academic writing,
- EAP writing,
- move structure,
- opinion writing,
- problem-solution discourse
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer September 15, 2018
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no3.16
Citation Information
Surasawadee Ratanakul. "A Move Analysis of Problem-Solution Discourse: A Pedagogical Guide for Opinion and Academic Writing" Arab World English Journal Vol. 9 Iss. 3 (2018) p. 233 - 247 ISSN: 2229-9327 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/arabworldenglishjournal-awej/555/