6.1 Introduction
Genre-based pedagogies have been used in the teaching of academic writing since the 1980s(Paltridge,2014;Tardy,2009).Compared with process-based pedagogies,which see writing mostly in terms of individual self-expression,the genre approach regards writing as a purposeful social action aimed at meeting the genre expectations of a discourse community.Thus,the social nature of genre approaches rejects the“inherent liberal individualism”view of writing of the process approach(Hyland,2003,p.17).Swales(1990)argues that the explicit instruction of genre norms empowers L2 writers by making explicit the conventions of academic writing.While the genre approach can be claimed to be an improvement on the process approach,the emphasis on the social nature of writing may reinforce inequality(Hyland,2003)in the sense that L2 writers of different cultural and educational backgrounds are then expected to adapt to the genre conventions of the dominant English-medium communities.If the problem with the process approach is too strong a focus on individualism,then genre-based pedagogies may face the opposite problem:requiring conformity to a particular set of conventions.An associated problem arises from the method of analysing genres,which follows the standard corpus methodology of amalgamating the output of a number of individuals and analysing the corpus as a whole.The resulting genre analysis leads to a set of norms which conceals the variation within academic writing and thus can lead to the imposition of an overly uniform standard.
In recent years,a number of pedagogically-driven genre analysis studies have been carried out and typically these have attempted to identify the genre conventions of a discourse community or compare the conventions of one community with another,such as a comparison of two disciplinary communities(e.g.Bruce,2009;Stoller &Robinson,2013)or two geographic communities(e.g.Zhao &Wu,2013;Martin &Leon Perez,2014).Whether examining the genre conventions of a particular community or comparing conventions in two or more communities,the genre practices of individual writers are combined and represented by a set of moves based on the median(e.g.Loi &Evans,2010;Samraj,2005)or the mean for each move(e.g.Kwan,Chan,&Lam,2012;Lim,2011).While the use of median and mean has obvious advantages,the employment of such measures alone means that the range of individual variation within each community is not taken into account.
Although individual differences are seldom mentioned explicitly in genre-related studies,they have been examined in other research paradigms in Applied Linguistics.For instance,a large number of studies explore learner differences and their relation with the outcome of second language acquisition.The differences examined include foreign language aptitude,cognitive and social characteristics,learning strategies,motivation,age and personality(Dörnyei,2006;Muñoz,2007).This paradigm is exemplified by Grey,Williams,and Rebuschat(2015),who investigated the relation between three individual differences(i.e.phonological working memory,learning styles and personality)and the learning of word order and morphological case.To fit the present study into this broad area of research,the researcher can say that I am investigating the relation between learner differences(i.e.former community)and learner performance(i.e.genre practice).
Apart from individual difference studies in language acquisition,the present study also draws on corpus-based investigation on individual differences in written and spoken discourse.This type of study typically focuses on linguistics features that are associated with an individual writer or speaker(Mollin,2009).For example,Author(2013)examined idiolectal usage as evidenced by the frequency of common bigram and trigrams in the speech of six White House press secretaries.Eighteen sub-corpora representing the spoken output of the press secretaries over a period of months were collected and analysed.A correspondence analyses of the common bigram and trigram frequency of each sample shows that the texts produced by each speaker cluster together,indicating the existence of“idiolectal variation”of the particular genre within this very specific discourse community(p.471).Unlike the research of Author(2013)which focuses on linguistic features,the present study investigates individual differences in the use of rhetorical moves,which is defined as“a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative function in a written or spoken discourse”(Swales,2004,p.228).
Another key construct of the present study is discourse community.When introducing the term in 1990,Swales described some defining characteristics:a discourse community is made up of a group of individuals who share common goals;possess mechanisms of communication and information exchange;own one or more genres and specific lexis;and have expert members with content and discoursal expertise.Although the characteristics given by Swales are quite specific,the identification of a discourse community in the real world remains problematic.
A number of comparative genre analysis studies have been conducted to identify the nature of academic discourse communities.The first type of comparative research explores whether there is a boundary between disciplines by examining the schematic structure of the same genre in different disciplines,such as Dentistry and Language Teaching(Basturkmen,2012),Sociology and Organic Chemistry(Bruce,2009),History,Political Science and Sociology(Holmes,1997),Education and Applied Linguistics(Lim,2010),and Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics(Pho,2008).Most of the studies of this type find evidence of disciplinary variation.The second type of research focusses on the writer’s first language which is typically inferred from the information concerning the writer’s geographical community.Studies in this strand look at texts collected from the same discipline but written by authors located in different language communities,for example,Polish vs.English-speaking communities(Duszak,1994),Chinese vs.English-speaking communities(Loi &Evans,2010),Spanish vs.English-speaking communities(Sheldon,2011).Evidence of considerable geographical variation comes out of these studies.Combining the findings of the two types of comparative studies,we can assume that the intersection of a disciplinary community and a geographical community forms a relatively stable community of coherent genre practice,which will be referred to as a local disciplinary community in this article.
The present study investigates whether the composition of a local disciplinary community influences the patterns of individual variation within that community.In particular,we examine whether the individual variation pattern of a community with both international students and local students(henceforth a mixed community)differs from that of a community where the students are mostly local(henceforth a uniform community).To proceed with the study,the researcher selected three local disciplinary communities,namely the Applied Linguistics communities in China(a uniform community),in New Zealand and in America(both of which are mixed communities).In choosing an academic genre used in these communities,I decided to look at the Master’s Thesis for two reasons:First,the Master’s Thesis is likely to be the first serious academic genre and the first substantial piece of writing that a student produces.Previous studies have revealed difficulties experienced by both L1 and L2 students when composing their Master’s Theses(Belcher,1994;Bitchener &Banda,2007;Dong,1998;Jenkins,Jordan,&Weiland,1993).Second,I wish to pursue a corpus-based quantitative study and the Master’s Thesis is one of the genres with the largest number of instances in Applied Linguistics communities.Hence,the researcher is able to obtain a sufficient number of samples to suit a corpus-based analytic procedure.Given that theses are usually quite long,the present study only examines the opening section(i.e.the Introductions and Literature Reviews),which has been the focus of many genre analysis studies.Previous research explored the schematic structure of Introductions and Literature Reviews(Swales,1990;2004;Bunton,2002;Kwan,2006;Dudley-Evans,1986),investigated the variation in the use of moves and steps between disciplinary and language communities(Kanoksilapatham,2007;Loi &Evans,2010;Soler-Monreal,Carbonell-Olivares &Gil-Salom,2011;Martín &León Pérez,2014;Soler-Monreal,2015),and examined the realisation of specific moves and steps(Lim,Loi,&Hashim,2014;Lim,2014;Lim,Loi,Hashim,&Liu,2015).These examinations paid special attention to typical or recurrent genre features employed by community members.Individual differences were seldom examined.
Rather than investigating the genre conventions of a community by examining representative texts as is done in most ESP genre analyses,the present study investigates the use of moves in individual texts,which are sampled randomly(though the texts were stratified for different purposes before sampling).Thus the focus is on both individual variation and the community.The aim is to explore whether the genre practice of successful writers of a community is similar.Successful in this context means that the students’theses have been accepted by the community and the students have received their master’s degree.The following research questions are addressed in this study:
1.How does the use of moves in individual texts vary in each local disciplinary community?
2.Is there any difference in the pattern of individual variation between the uniform and mixed communities?
3.Which factors contribute to any individual differences identified?