A Comparative Study of Move Analysis in Chinese and International Research Article Abstracts

To raise the authors’ awareness of using the moves and move models in abstract writing, this study compares the frequency, type, and significant difference of moves and move models in 100 abstracts written in English by Chinese scholars and 100 abstracts written by international scholars in 10 prestigious international journals in the field of linguistics. The adapted Hyland’s five-move model was used as research framework, Corpus and statistic software SPSS were used as research instruments. The comparisons report that Chinese scholars tend to use introduction, result, and conclusion moves. International scholars are inclined to use purpose, method, result, and conclusion moves. The results also indicate that the four-move model is the most prevalent in the two groups. Chinese scholars used the two-move model more than the English authors whereas used the five-move model less than the international authors. The findings are intended to provide referential value for the writing and teaching of English for academic purposes.