Rhetorical structure of Discussion section in undergraduate students’ theses

Abstract

Thesis completion is a challenging task for English majors due to their lack of experience in the genre of academic writing. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the Discussion section in undergraduate students’ theses, adopting Yang and Allison’s (2003) framework. The data was collected from 30 Discussion sections from 30 theses undertaken by English majors at a university in Vietnam. Move analysis was employed to analyze the data. The results indicated that all the sections conformed strictly to the four moves of the standard structure. However, little attention was paid to several steps such as: comparing with previous studies, accounting for the results, evaluating the results, indicating the contribution, evaluating the methods, and making suggestions. The findings put forth some recommendations to enhance academic writing skills for students at A university and other institutions of similar context.