A Comparative Moves Analysis Study of Articles Abstracts Written by Iranian M.A. Students of TEFL and Medical Studies

In this study, attempts were made to report a corpus-based comparative move analysis on the five processes involved in medical and applied linguistics abstracts. For this purpose, two samples of abstract, 70 applied linguistics and 70 medical, were selected as our corpus. These abstracts were analyzed through identification of Halliday‟s transitivity system which includes 6 process types. These processes are classified under six headings: material, relational, behavioral, mental, verbal and existential. As the results show, material and relational process types gained the highest positions among the other processes types in both medical and applied linguistics abstract. Mental and existential gained the lowest position among the other process types in both medical and applied linguistics abstracts and behavioral process was omitted because there was not any occurrence in our corpus. The pedagogical implication of the present study for material developers is that, they should conduct moves analysis over various scientific texts to choose appropriate a materials for their publications.

applied linguistics abstract, medical articles abstract, transitivity system, process types