| Academic discourse has generated enormous interest among linguists working in different areas and using different methodologies since the 1980s and different kinds of discourses have been studied in the scop of genre analysis.This thesis aims to empirically investigate, with reference to Bunton (1998, 2005), the structure of Conclusions of MA thesis for possible generic differences between the concluding sections of research theses composed by MA candidates in Chinese universities and their counterparts in American and Canadian universities in a cross-cultural perspective, and to propose models for Chinese writers to enhance their ability to write English research papers. To carry out the research, two corpora were established, one is TCU (Theses from Chinese Univerities) consisting 40 English MA theses written by Chinese writers and the other is TACU (Theses from American and Canadian Univerities) consisting 40 by native speakers from America and Canada.The results show that most Conclusions of the two copora have introductory restatement, consolidation of research space, practical applications, implications and recommendations, recommendations for future research, and concluding restatement. The introduction move is found obligatory for English MA theses Conclusions by both Chinese speakers and American and Canadian speakers, except two of them in the TACU; the consolidate your research space move, which took up most part of the thesis-oriented concluding chapters in the English MA theses, is a main move occurring in all the 80 thesis-oriented Concluding chapters and is considered as a compulsive move rather than an optional one by both the native writers from America & Canada and the Chinese writers; The result also suggests that there were two different kinds of recommendations (for future research or for the actual application) in the corpus; and both TACU and TCU conclusions see recommendations for future research as a distinctive move, however, the American and Canadian more often than Chinese made it as a distinctive move. |
