Genre-based revising strategies of graduate students in applied linguistics: Insights from term papers

Abstract

The need for genre literacy is increasingly becoming evident in academic writing courses, particularly in the realm of research article (RA) writing. This paper documents RA genre-literacy informed revisions English as an Additional Language (EAL) graduate students applied to improve their term-paper assignments in the form of RAs following their participation in a series of genre-based research paper writing workshops in Applied Linguistics. Drawing upon insights from the revision strategy frameworks of Allal and Chanquoy (2003) and Willey and Tanimoto (2012), we developed a six-category taxonomy consisting of addition, deletion, reformulation, substitution, translocation, and expansion genre-based revision strategies. Using the prevailing genre-based frameworks, we compared the earlier and revised drafts of twelve RAs composed by Iranian graduate students to account for the strategies they employed to redraft each section of papers in terms of move-step realization. This study found that expansion, reformulation, and addition were the most commonly used genre-based revision strategies. In addition, the findings revealed that moves in introduction and discussion sections included the highest number of genre-based revisions. Through introducing genre-oriented RA revision strategies, this study calls for further attempts to promote the integration of genre literacy into English for Research Publication Purposes courses.