Rhetorical Structures of Abstracts Written for TESOL International Conferences

Introduction: The current research aimed to investigate rhetorical move structures in abstracts written for TESOL international conferences by non-native speakers of English. Methodology: Sixty abstracts were collected from Vietnamese and Thai proceedings published by three universities. These abstracts were written for the TESOL conventions in the period 2018-2019. The study used the five-move scheme (I-P-M-R-D) adapted from Pho’s (2008) framework for move analysis with the assistance of the automatic text analysis and move occurrences soft wares AntMover and AntConc. Results: Results from the study showed that Methodology, Result, and Purpose sections played vital parts in abstract writing while Introduction and Discussion seized small portions in the corpus. While writing abstracts for TESOL conventions, the Method section is frequently repeated or embedded in the 60 target abstracts of the present study. The present study also indicated that the authors writing papers for TESOL conferences did not strictly follow the five-move sequence as expected due to word limitation and face-to-face mode of paper presentations at conventions. Non-linear move patterns were also recognized that are aligned with the findings of previous research studies. Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that the abstracts written for TESOL international conferences in this research have followed the P-M-R order of an abstract rhetorical structure. This study's findings on rhetorical structures could be of great assistance in helping novice writers in composing well-structured abstracts for TESOL conferences.