A move/step model for methods sections: Demonstrating Rigour and Credibility

Abstract

In the tradition of Swalesian genre theory, this manuscript explores the rhetorical composition of research article Methods sections through a top-down analysis of a corpus of nine hundred texts representative of thirty academic fields. The analysis resulted in a comprehensive cross-disciplinary model, called Demonstrating Rigour and Credibility (DRaC). The model contains three moves and sixteen steps, which are defined in terms of functional and content realizations. DRaC further served as the analytic framework for corpus annotation. Manually annotated corpus data revealed the moves and steps with high distributional prominence as well as those that are not frequent but occur consistently within and across disciplines. Visualizations of individual texts in a sample of disciplines demonstrated inter-disciplinary and intradisciplinary patterns and variation in move sequencing. Additionally, algorithmic analysis of the annotated corpus showed that soft and hard sciences form clusters based on their use of DRaC steps, providing a deeper understanding of how shared conventions of rhetorical composition distinguish cross-disciplinary similarities in Methods discourse. The findings lend themselves to application in genre writing pedagogy and, more broadly, hold implications for theories of social and cognitive genres.

Technology and the future of language teaching

“…Bennett () has provided a number of suggestions for using corpora in language classrooms while Cobb () has written extensively about the use of corpora for teaching vocabulary in context. More recently, researchers have studied the use of corpora to teach genre (Cotos, Link, & Huffman, ), extensive reading (Hadley & Charles, ), pragmatics in speaking (Bardovi‐Harlig, Mossman, & Su, ), and collocational competence (Li, ). Some have recognized the potential for using the entire Internet as a corpus.…”

Applying the Bundle–Move Connection Approach to the Development of an Online Writing Support Tool for Research Articles

“…As comprehensive as Pho's move framework was, however, it seemed necessary to modify the classification in two research article sections (see items marked with an asterisk in Table 1). First, Pho's framework included only two moves (describing the data and data collection procedure, describing the data analysis procedure) in the method section, while previous research article move analysis studies have conventionally had more than two moves for this section (e.g., Cotos, Huffman, & Link, 2017;Kanoksilapatham, 2005;Wannaruk & Amnuai, 2015). Thus, in our study, we divided the method section into four moves: (a) describing the sample, (b) describing research instruments, (c) describing the procedures, and (d) describing the data analysis procedure.…”

Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-form gap

“…The data shown in recent studies of RA generic structure (e.g. Amnuai and Wannaruk, 2013;Cotos et al, 2017;Yang and Allison, 2003: 381-383) clearly suggest that the step is a more appropriate level for investigating the function-form gap than is the move.…”

“…A major aim of these move analysts has been the identification of the linguistic features characterizing the various RA rhetorical moves (e.g. Cortes, 2013;Cotos et al, 2017;Kanoksilapatham 2005;Le and Harrington, 2015;Swales, 1981), often for pedagogic purposes. We refer to this research gap as 'the function-form gap'.…”