6.4　Discussion

When investigating genre conventions of English-medium communities,previous studies have typically collected writings of native or near-native speakers of English,who are deemed to be representative of a particular discourse community(e.g.Loi &Evans,2010;Sheldon,2011;Zhao &Wu,2013).However,what we might call the globalisation of academic English leading to distinctive academic communities writing in English around the world(Tribble,2017).This means that native English speakers may no longer be uncritically taken to be representative of the community,especially at the postgraduate level.This study shows that although students in the same local community are relatively cohesive in terms of genre practice,they do not form a homogenous group and individual differences can be accommodated within the norms of the community.As shown above,the influence from former communities is one source of individual variation in genre practices.

More generally,I would argue for more of a focus on individual differences as an additional level of analysis when investigating the genre conventions of a particular community.Based on the findings reported above,some broader issues to be considered in future investigation of individual differences in genre practices are discussed.