Move-Step Analysis of Research Article Abstracts

Abstract

An abstract is considered as the most important section of a research article because it attracts readers’ attention. Based on Hyland’s (2000) five-move model, this study was aimed at investigating the move-step structure of 137 linguistics research articles which were selected from a prestigious Vietnamese journal. A quantitative and qualitative research was used in this study to pinpoint the frequencies of moves in abstracts and steps which helped realize these moves. The findings revealed that Product move made up the highest percentage in comparison with other moves such as Introduction, Purpose, Method and Conclusion. Moreover, lexico-grammatical perspectives to realize steps for moves including voice, tense or self-mention pronouns were also scrutinized in this study. From the results of the study, there are some implications for researchers and teachers who would like to publish their papers internationally and teach academic writing courses at higher education, respectively.