A Pedagogical Move Analysis of Literature Reviews in ELT Research Articles and Ph.D. Dissertations

This study scrutinizes the rhetorical moves and sub-moves in corpora of literature review sections of 20 research articles published in prestigious journals and 20 literature review chapters of Iranian Ph.D. dissertations from English language teaching ( ELT ) discipline aiming to compare expert and novice writers’ practices and products. The move analysis approach was applied to fulfill the aims of this corpus-based discourse study. To this end, Kwan’s (2006) literature review move model was employed for the move analysis. The results indicate discrepancies in the length and frequency of use in several rhetorical sub-moves. Yet, both novice and expert writers almost followed a holistic schematic structure, including a novel strategy identified in both sets of corpora. In addition, the findings shed light on the significance of the disciplinary realization of the schematic structure and explicit writing practices for student writers. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed for designers and instructors to produce more appropriate academic materials for inexperienced and novice writers in ter ms of communicative purposes.