A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of Literature Review In MA Theses Of Applied Linguistics By Chinese And English Native Speakers

With the increasingly international academic communication, English has become the dominant language for academic research。Accordingly, the ability to write English research paper should be improved. It is in urgent demands for graduates to learn how to write English research paper which consists with international academic norm. Literature review, as theoretical foundation for reviewers’ studies, is an indispensable part of academic theses, connecting the previous and the present studies.With the development of genre analysis, literature reviews in masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations have begun to draw the attention of scholars. Compared with other sections such as abstract, introduction in a thesis, a few researches have been made into literature review, especially the contrastive studies of literature review in theses written by non-native English speakers and native English speakers.This paper attempts to make a contrastive genre analysis of literature review in MA theses of applied linguistics written by Chinese (hereafter called CLRs) and native English speakers (hereafter called NLRs), which takes the structural model of western academics in O’Connell and Jin’s study as a reference. Through contrastive study, the paper aims to investigate the similarities and differences in the generic features of literature review between the corpora of CLRs and NLRs.The comparison of results shows that the generic structures of literature reviews in CLRs and NLRs follow the structural model of western academics. And meanwhile, there are some similarities and differences between the two corpora. The main differences are as follows.1) In CLRs, Move1(Statement of Problem Issues) accounts for75.32%, while the percentage is54.75%in NLRs, suggesting an over-long lead-in in CLRs.2) Move2(Findings Related to the Problem Issues) accounts for9.75%and19.98%respectively in CLRs and NLRs, which indicates a visible differences in analyzing the previous researches through finding out the similar, different or opposite opinions.3) With the percentage of5.19%and13.32%in CLRs and NLRs, the contrastive analysis of Move3(Critical Analysis of Findings) shows that a few CLRs have critical analysis and evaluation of previous researches and Chinese reviews tend to make claims without reasons or evidence supported.The possible reasons may lie in the vague understanding of generic structure of literature review, the influence of cultural background, and the lack of skills in critical analysis. The application of the structural model can provide a framework for postgraduates to write more readable and critical literature reviews. Moreover, the present study also shed light on the teaching of English MA theses and the cultivation of critical thinking.