| English research journal articles have recently received extensive attention in the international academic exchanges as the important connection between international academic circles, which greatly improved the cooperation and communication between China and foreign academic communities. Therefore, the research exploring the genre and linguistic features of research articles becomes more and more important. Over the last thirty years, many previous researchers have investigated other sections of research articles across various scientific disciplines such as abstract, introduction, methods and results. Much fewer has examined Discussion section (DS) of research articles. It is claimed that Discussion section has actually been recognized by more and more researchers in domestic and abroad. Discussion section is extremely important for successful publications of RAs. However, the writing of DS is especially difficult for Chinese scholars.This thesis firstly selected 8 English scientific and technological journals in the field of environmental science during 2009-2010 included in SCI and EI. Then 120 English research journal articles(60 for Corpus CNS, 60 for Corpus ENS) respectively written by Chinese and English native speaking writers (CNSWs & ENSWs) were collected from 8 international journals of environmental science, and 60 DSs (30 for Corpus CNS, 30 for Corpus ENS) were randomly selected to establish two corpora from these RJAs. Base upon the theoretical framework of genre analysis, the present research made a contrastive analysis of Discussion sections between the two corpora and aimed to explore the similarities and differences between the DSs written by the CNSWs and ENSWs. Corpus CNS and Corpus ENS were comparatively analyzed with respect to macro (genre structure) and micro perspectives (linguistic features). First, the two corpora were investigated from generic structure. Then the present study has undertaken a complete and detailed analysis of linguistic features from the micro perspective.In light of the above analysis of generic structure and linguistic features between the two corpora, this thesis examined the similarities and differences from the macro and micro aspects. Our findings indicated that: 1. Discussion sections in the field of environmental science written by the CNSWs are different from those written by the ENSWs in terms of frequency of occurrence and move-structure (moves) sequence. There are also five similar moves with significantly higher frequency between the two corpora ("Research Results","Research Findings","Previous Research to Reference","Explanation"and"Deduction and Hypothesis"); also both corpora showed the repeated use of move and the absence of move; and it was also evident that the difference exists in the frequency occurrence of the remaining moves between the two corpora ("Background Information","Limitations and Recommendations"). 2. Both corpora have employed similar types of move cycle that present in the DSs with a cyclic pattern, but demonstrated some differences in the frequency of occurrence of move cycles. 3. From a micro perspective, Discussion sections were differently distributed in terms of first-person plural pronouns, and Corpus ENS is much higher than Corpus CNS base upon their frequency of occurrence, and the two corpora showed no significant differences in the overall frequency of verb tenses, with similar frequently used tenses:"past tense","present tense"and"present perfect", but the verb tense is differently distributed among the moves between the two corpora. This thesis aims to investigate the similarities and differences of Discussion sections by the CNSWs and ENSWs from both macro and micro perspectives regarding genre structure and linguistic features. Base upon the above research results, this thesis attempts to explain the similarities and differences between the two corpora and provides some references for the future research of research article writing, and promoting the teaching of English academic writing in the Discussion sections.
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