6.3.1 Individual Differences in Three Local Commun...
Looking first at variation at the community level,significant differences were found in the standardised length[1] of moves in the opening sections written by students in China,New Zealand and America,with the results of a MANOVA test being V=0.47,F(10,168)=5.09,p＜0.001.The test,which is based on averages,indicates differences in the general practice of the three groups of writers.Crucially,the present study goes further and investigates individual differences within each community.The three line charts in Figure 1 show the distribution of moves in individual texts in each of the three local communities.Each chart contains 30 lines,showing the standardised length of each move of the 30 texts in a sub-corpus.By observing the line charts,we can clearly see that the lines in the China chart tend to follow a similar pattern and are more congruent than those in the other two charts,indicating that there is less individual variation in the move structure of thesis opening sections written in China.Some possible explanations for these differences are considered in the next section.