RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION SECTIONS IN MASTER'S THESES WRITTEN BY ENGLISH L1 AND L2 STUDENTS

In writing a master's thesis students are expected to demonstrate both disciplinary knowledge and mastery of genre-specific writing conventions, which is particularly challenging for English L2 students writing in English. The present study deals with the analysis of the rhetorical structure of the Discussion and Conclusion sections in the corpus of master's theses (N=40) written by students majoring in applied linguistics at Croatian, UK- and US-based universities. Broadly based on the move-step models of the rhetorical structure of Discussions and Conclusions in research articles, the study explored the distribution of the rhetorical moves and steps across two sections in English L1 and L2 writing. The analysis showed overall higher frequencies of rhetorical moves in L1 thesis sections, indicating that English L1 writers structure the content of the Discussion and Conclusion sections in a rhetorically more elaborate manner than English L2 writers. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for informed genre-based academic writing instruction, particularly in non-Anglophone academic contexts.