Variation in writing in master's programs: A contextualized genre analysis

Writing produced as coursework requirement in master’s programs remains under-researched even though twice as many international students pursue master’s degrees as those who pursue doctoral degrees in the United States. This paper reports on a contextualized genre analysis including assignment prompts, faculty interviews, and student writing from master’s programs in Statistics, Mathematics, and Microbiology, following Swales’s recent call for studies to strive for an ‘emic’ perspective that goes beyond the textual and explores the context in which academic genres are produced. A qualitative, contextualized genre analysis of a technical review from Mathematics, statistical report from Statistics, and research plan from Microbiology revealed the heterogeneity in master’s level writing, while also uncovering similarities in the goals for writing such as student engagement with the methods of research studies, either the student’s study in Statistics or published research in Mathematics. This contextualized genre analysis also identified student writing such as the research plan, which is more closely related to recognizable research genres such as grant proposals, and other “school” genres such as the technical review, shown to be quite different from article reviews. These findings can be employed in creating genre-based materials focused on the needs of master’s level students.