Genre Analysis of Abstracts, Introductions, and Conclusions of Master Dissertations Moves: A Case Study: Department of English, UMMTO

Abstract

The current study investigates the field of genre analysis which is at the core of many interests. It seeks to scrutinize seven abstracts, introductions, and conclusions in order to reveal the different moves followed by students of the department of English of Tizi Ouzou in writing their Master Dissertations. To achieve this objective, three distinct theoretical frameworks are employed namely; Cooley and Lewcowicz’s abstracts moves, Swales and Feak’s introductions moves, and Thompson’s conclusions moves. In order to analyze the corpus, relational content analysis is adopted. The latter consists of a procedure allowing the identification of some terms/sentences which express the moves of the aforementioned sections. The mixed method is used to report the results. It was found that the analyzed dissertations have not been organized following the same moves. As a matter of fact, some moves have been displaced, others omitted while additional moves are to be found in some abstracts, introductions and conclusions. This may stem from the students’ lack of awareness of well-organizing moves in writing coherent dissertations.