14 

 

RHETORICAL MOVES AND LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF JOURNAL 

ARTICLE ABSTRACTS BY POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS, NATIONAL 

AND INTERNATIONAL AUTHORS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS 

Rosy Putri Andika 

Safnil 

Alamsyah Harahap 

 

University of Bengkulu 

rosyputriandika@gmail.com 

 

Abstract: The abstract has become the first part that will be read by readers in a 

research article. Some important aspects in the abstract are move structure and 

linguistic features. This study examines the rhetorical moves and linguistic 

features of English research article abstract written by three groups of authors in 

Applied Linguistics. The research design was mixed method design combining 

quantitative and qualitative method with the corpus of this study consisted of 60 

abstracts by postgraduate students, national and international authors found in RA 

abstracts. The results show that the common moves by three groups of authors 

have only three moves (i.e purpose, method, and results). The common linguistic 

features used by three groups of authors are active voice, present tense, and 

simple sentence. By comparing the three groups of abstracts the differences are 

found in the postgraduate students authors. They were used move 1 (Background/ 

introduction/ situation) fewer than national and international authors. Furthur the 

postgraduate students used past tense more dominant than present tense and using 

hedges is more frequently than national and international authors. This study 

concludes that in writing RA abstracts a writer should adjust the commonly used 

rules the abstract especially in using 5 moves in the abstracts.  

Key Words: Abstract, Rhetorical Move, Applied Linguistics 

 

INTRODUCTION 

An abstract is the first part that will 

be read in the publication journal, 

research article, thesis, and so on. 

The readers can overview the content 

of a journal by reading an abstract. 

Submitting an abstract is an 

important thing even in national or 

international journal. The objective 

can be more detail seen by reading 

the abstract. Abstract is beneficial for 

the reader to identify the keywords 

that will make it easier for exploring 

the research.  

The moves of abstracts are to 

extend the purpose in research 

article. Writing abstract becomes an 

obligation in journal, research article, 

and thesis. Swales and Feak (2009) 

investigated that the number of 

“rhetorical moves” (or 

communicative stages) in abstracts 

can be found in various fields and in 

various languages. Most researchers 

identify a potential total of five 

moves in the rhetorical structure of 

abstract. In the other words, abstract 

can identify a whole content of a 

study and such an option for the 

mailto:r


15 

 

reader to continue to read the study 

or not.  

Although an abstract is very 

important on the research article, 

writing abstract is not easy for 

students, novice, and new writers. 

According to Safnil (2014) writing 

an abstract for RA (Research Article) 

is not only difficult for university 

students; it is also hard for lecturer 

and novice writers. It might be 

different problems for different 

group of writers ( i.e. Postgraduate 

Students, national and international 

authors). An increasingly important 

area in such research is the study of 

thesis writing at the postgraduate 

level, with much attention paid to 

theses written in English as a second 

or foreign language (Ren and Li: 

2011). Other problems of writing 

abstract in English by non-native are 

the right choice of tenses and 

sentence patterns.  

Based on the explanation 

above, one of the main problems 

experienced by research article 

author is writing abstract. Choosing 

the right tenses and sentence patterns 

become the problems in writing 

abstract. However, the comparative 

study on various groups of writers 

still rarely done especially is research 

article abstract in Applied 

Linguistics. This is the rational of 

this study that is to investigate the 

similarities and differences on move 

structure of abstract written by three 

groups of authors they are 

postgraduate students, national and 

international authors.  

Based on the background of 

this research, the problems as 

followed, writing abstract is difficult 

not only for the novice or new writer 

but also postgraduate students, 

national and international authors. 

The problem in writing abstract still 

found in move structural, tenses, and 

sentence patterns, and finally 

analyzing English abstract in 

Indonesia is still rarely done. Many 

studies have analyzed abstract in 

different aspects. Ren and Li (2011: 

162) compared the study on the 

rhetorical moves of abstracts in 

published research articles and 

master‟s foreign language theses. 

They found that five basic rhetorical 

moves in developing abstracts were 

commonly found in the abstracts 

written by both experts and student 

writers, experts tend to be more 

selective in their use of the moves to 

best promote their papers, while 

student writers tend to include all the 

moves to be more informative of the 

content and structure of their theses. 

Some student writers even include 

“limitation” in their abstracts without 

mentioning the strength, which might 

undermine the value of their work. 

This is in contrast to expert writers‟ 

effort in promoting their paper in 

their abstract by including the 

“conclusion” move more often. 

Students‟ lengthy “introduction” 

move and over brief “product” move, 

in contrast to expert writers‟ 

balanced use of these two moves, 

reveals their insecurity as novice 

writers. Students‟ repetition in their 

abstracts indicates their unawareness 

of the value of space in academic 

writing. 

 The other research analyzed 

the comparison in different grade of 

ability (San and Tan, 2012: 40). They 

compared study the rhetorical moves 

in abstracts of students‟ term papers 



16 

 

and published articles in the field of 

Computer and Communications 

Systems Engineering. They found 

that Move 1 and Move 2 were seen 

to be the obligatory moves for the 

two groups of writers although the 

total occurrences of both moves were 

higher in the expert abstracts. Move 

3 which was seen as optional for the 

expert writers was however, seen as 

obligatory for the novice writers. For 

Move 4, although both groups of the 

writers regarded the move as 

optional, the novice writers had less 

tendency of using the move than the 

expert writers. However, Move 5 

which appeared to be optional too for 

both groups of writers was seen to be 

used more by the novice writers in 

the abstract writing. In other words, 

the expert and novice writers were 

seen to take Move 1 and Move 2 as 

the obligatory moves but for Move 3, 

Move 4 and Move 5 the writers 

tended to have different preferences 

of using the moves.  

Almost the same issue Tseng 

(2011: 27) examined 90 research 

article abstract in three linguistics 

journals from two dimensions, there 

are the move structure and the 

second is the verb tense of each 

move. The analysis included the 

distribution of the five moves, the 

move structures, and the distribution 

of the opening and closing moves of 

abstracts. He found that the abstracts 

analyzed tended to take a four- move 

structure instead of five- move one as 

proposed in literature. He was also 

found that there were some 

variations between the abstract 

written by native speakers and 

nonnative  speakers of English. 

Can, et al (2016) studied fifty 

research articles were randomly 

selected from the ESP journal, the 

abstracts were taken from recent 

issues published between 2011 and 

2013 preferred to reflect current 

writing practices. They found that 

authors discuss results, purpose, and 

methodology in their abstracts more 

than implications of the findings or 

background information. They said 

the authors are well aware of the fact 

that they need to use the allowed 

space economically, then the 

background information about the 

topic is the first to be omitted by 

writers in Applied Linguistics, and 

thus it seems to be the only move in 

the optional category, being 

disregarded in more than half of the 

sampled abstracts.  

In addition, an abstract has 

also been analyzed in any disciplines. 

Some studies have conducted the 

research in Applied Linguistic. Safnil 

(2014), investigated thirty abstracts 

in three disciplines (i.e. Humanity 

economics, management, and 

education) written in English by 

Indonesian writers. Firstly, he found 

that the major of RA abstracts 

written in English by Indonesian 

academics in the corpus of this study 

have only three moves (i.e. Purpose, 

method, and results) Second, the 

English abstracts found in the data of 

this study are mostly written in active 

sentence using present tense except 

for move 3 (Methods) in which half 

of them are written in past tense that 

– complement sentences are mostly 

found in move- 4 (results and 

finding).  

Based on the previous studies 

above the comparative studies 

conducted in term papers and thesis 

students.  However, this study is the 

comparative study on various groups 



17 

 

of writers still rarely done especially 

is research article abstract in Applied 

Linguistics. This study will be 

analyzed five moves patterns and 

linguistic features in research article 

abstact written by three group of 

writers such as postgraduate 

students, national authors, and 

international authors.  

 

METHODOLOGY 

This research is conducted by using 

mixed method to answer three 

questions, namely the rhetorical 

moves and linguistic features in RA 

abstracts by postgraduate students, 

national authors, and international 

authors in Applied Linguistic. 

According to Creswell and Plano 

(2007) mentions that side steps the 

issue of paradigms, but characterizes 

mixed methods research as having a 

set of guiding philosophical 

assumptions and a method where a 

qualitative and quantitative were 

mixed at some point in the study. 

The qualitative method used in 

collecting the data to compare by 

three groups of writers (i.e 

Postgraduate Students, national 

authors, and International Authors), 

while the quantitative method used in 

analyzing the research article 

abstracts by different group of 

writers in Applied Linguistics.  

The corpus of this study 

consisted of sixty RA abstracts in 

applied linguistics written by 

different group of authors (i.e 

postgraduate students, national 

authors, and international authors) 

they were; twenty journals were 

randomly selected by postgraduate 

students (RA abstracts) in applied 

linguistics, twenty RA abstracts by 

national authors (teacher/ lecturer) in 

applied linguistics, and twenty RA 

abstracts were from international 

authors in applied linguistics.  

The postgraduate students 

used research article abstracts in 

Journal of English Language and 

Literature Education (JOALL) by 

English education department at 

University of Bengkulu. Research 

article abstracts by national authors 

was taken in TEFLIN Journal‟s 

website, international authors‟ 

abstract was taken from some 

website such as International Journal 

of English Studies (IJES) and ASIA 

EFL Journal Professional Articles. 

Table 1 presents the distribution of 

abstracts as the corpus of the study. 

The instrument of this study 

was checklist containing of five 

move patterns and checklist 

containing of linguistic features. The 

moves used by Swales (2009) with 

five moves such as Move 1) 

Background/Introduction/ Situation, 

Move 2) Present research / Purposes, 

Move 3), Methods/ Materials/ 

Subject/ Procedures, Move 4), 

Results/ Finding and Move 5), 

Discussion/ Conclusion/ Implication/ 

Recommendation.  

In addition, checklist for linguistic 

feature contained such as voice 

(passive and active voice), tenses 

(present and past tense), type of 

sentence (simple and complex 

sentence), and metadiscourse devices 

(hedges, attitudinal stance, and self-

reference words) modified in Zhang, 

et al (2012).  

 

 



18 

 

Table 1: Frequency of Moves in  

English Research Article Abstracts 

 

 

Because of the analysis of moves and 

linguistic feature involved subjective 

judgment. A Co- rater was asked to 

analyze sample of abstract in order to 

ensure the validity of text analysis. 

The Co- rater was a postgraduate 

student in English department at 

education faculty, Universitas 

Sebelas Maret. First, the co- rater has 

been told how to identify the 

abstracts in structure move and 

linguistic features following the 

analysis procedure already described. 

The rater has been given 15 out of 60 

abstracts (20%) from the corpus of 

this study. In this research, the result 

of the researcher and co- rater was 

compared. 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

This chapter presents the 

results and finding of this study 

based on analyzed the English 

abstracts written by three groups of 

authors in Applied Linguistics. The 

analyses also compared with co- 

rater, and the result discussed as 

follows. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sixty English RA abstracts in 

different groups of authors have been 

analyzed in this research, they were 

written by postgraduate students 

(PS), national authors (NA), and 

international authors (IA). The 

results as displayed in the following 

table. 

Note:  

PS= Postgraduate Students    

NA= National Authors   

IA= International Authors 

N= Total Abstracts 

 

As shown in Table 3, the 

most dominant move found in the 

abstracts written by three groups of 

authors are move 2 (Present 

research/ Purposes) used by 55 

authors (91,7%), move 3 (Methods/ 

Materials/ Subject/ Procedures) used 

by 54 authors (90%). and move 4 

(Results/ Finding) used by 57 authors 

(95%). The example of abstract with 

three dominant moves is as follow: 

Example 1: 

{M2} (S-1) This research was 

aimed to find out the 

students‟, lecturers‟, and 

experts‟ perspective toward 

the quality of the English 
course book for nursing 

department students. {M3} 

 

No 

 

Moves 

Abstract written by three groups of authors 

PS NA IA Total % 

n=20 n=20 n=20 N=60 

1. Move 1 4 12 9 25 41,7% 

2. Move 2 20 16 19 55 91,7% 

3. Move 3 20 16 18 54 90% 

4. Move 4 20 18 19 57 95% 

5. Move 5 13 13 11 37 61,7% 



19 

 

(S-2)This research was an 

evaluative study. (S-3)The 

participants of this research 

were 3 experts, 3 lecturers 

and 80 nursing students. (S-

4)The instrument of this 

research was an evaluation 

checklist based on 

McDonough and Shaw‟s 

criteria. {M4} (S-5)The 

findings of the research were 

(1) over eighty percent 

participants agreed that 

syllabus fulfills the criteria 

for quality a nursing course 

book; (2) over eighty percent 

participants agreed that the 

content area fulfills the 

criteria for quality a nursing 

course book; (3) over ninety 

percent participants agreed 

that layout and physical 

appearance fulfills the criteria 

for quality a nursing course 

book; (4) over eighty percent 

participants agreed that 

practicality  fulfills the 

criteria for quality a nursing 

course book; (5) over eighty 

percent participants agreed 

that language use  fulfills the 

criteria for quality a nursing 

course book. (PS-6) 

 

The example above shows 

that the first sentence is chategorized 

as move 2 which contains the 

purpose/ present of the study, 

because the lexicon ‘aimed’ indicates 

that the author explains the present 

study.  In the example 1, the sentence 

2 to 4 are chategorized as move 3, 

because the lexicon ‘…evaluative 

study’, ’The participants...’, ‘The 

instrument…’ indicate that they 

explained the method, subjects, and 

instrument of the study. Afterwards, 

In the sentence 5 the author defined 

the results/ findings of the research. 

It can be implied by the use of words 

„ the findings of the research...‟ that 

can be chategorized as move 4. Thus 

from explanation above this abstract 

have in three moves (move 2, move 

3, and move 4).  

Table 3 above also shows that 

move 5  (Discussion/ Conclusion/ 

implication/ recommmendation) used 

by 37 authors (61,7%) in writing 

abstracts. Here is the example of  

move 5 : 

Example 2: 

{M5}(S-9) „….Finally the 

study suggested implications 

and recommendations for 

additional studies within the 

Indonesian context.‟ (NA -

11) 

 

In example 2, move 5 can be 

found in sentence 9 of the abstract. It 

can be identidfied by the use specific 

lexicon of ‘ implication’, and 

‘recommendation’ that indicate the 

author providing implication and 

recommendation of the research. 

The used of move 1 

(Background, introduction, situation) 

is also shown in Table 3. Move 1 

reaches the samllest frequency and 

used by only 25 authors (41,7%). 

The example of  move 1 in an 

abstarct is as follow: 

Example 3: 

 {M1}(S-1) „ASEAN 

Economic Community (AEC) 

has become a popular issue. 

However, there are many 

obstacles in joining AEC. (S-



20 

 

2) One of them is English for 

communication. (S-3) 

Unfortunately, business 

English letters as the media 

for communication in 

business are not taught at 

schools. (S-4)  In fact, in this 

free trade era high school 

leavers are enhanced for 

being businessmen that need 

communications for 

business...‟ (IA-3) 

 

In the example above, 

sentence 1 to 4 are chategorized as 

move 1, because those sentences 

defined the situation/ background/ 

introduction of the research. It 

implies that the author tried to 

introduce the issue by describing 

phenomena that happened in AEC.  

 

In this study there are  

linguistic features that has been 

analyzed, such as Voice (active and 

passive voice), Tenses (past and 

present tense) , Sentence type 

(Simple and Complex sentence), and 

Metadiscourse  devices (Hedges, 

Attitudinal Stance, and Self- 

Reference words). The finding 

shown are as following description. 

 The results of voice features 

analysis in RA abstracts written by 

three groups of authors (i.e 

Postgraduate students, national and 

international authors) The total usage 

of active voice is 153 times (69,2%) 

while the passive voice is just 68 

times (29,8%) in the moves of  

abstracts. It means that the dominant 

use.  The example of active voice in 

the abstracts as follow: 

Example 4: 

(S-6) „This study aims at 

knowing the common stages 

of business English letters via 

email, whether the writers 

and the addressees 

understand the letters, and the 

strategies used in the 

letters…‟(IA-3) (M-2) 

 

In the example above, the 

sentence is chategorized as active 

voice. The possible reason is the 

sentence In RA abstract commonly 

using a noun phrase as the subject of 

the sentence, such as this research, 

this study, the paper, etc. This results 

in line with Zhang et al (2012) who 

found that the active voice was 

common in all the five moves of  the 

abstracts. 

Eventhough active voice as 

the highest fequency,  but passive 

voice also used in the abstracts. The 

example of passive voice as below: 

Example 5: 

(S-10) ‟….The students‟ 

perception indicates the 

developed materials were 

oriented to students‟ need, 

interesting and proven to be 

useful to solve the problem of 

lack of materials in English 

for Accounting. (PS-20) (M-

5) 

As shown in the example 

above, the authors used passive voice 

as an expression of move 5 in the 

abstract. This study has analyzed that 

the use of passive voice exists in all 

moves of abstracts. It seems that the 

authors used active or passive voice 

as an optional features in the moves 

of abstracts. 

 Other linguistic features 

analyzed in English RA abstracts are 



21 

 

tenses (present tense and past 

tenses). The total sentence with 

present tense is 112 three groups of 

authors, this study indicates that 

postgraduate students obtain 

different results. The authors of times 

(49,1%) while the past tense is 97 

times (42,5%) in the moves of 

abstracts. It implies that the dominant 

usage of tenses features is present 

tense. By comparing the PS groups 

used past tense more dominant than 

present tense. It might be the PS 

groups supposed that the research 

had been done, so they tend to use 

past tense than present tense. The 

example of present tense as dominant 

usage is as follow: 

Example 6: 

(S-1) „This paper identifies 

challenges that English as a 

foreign language (EFL) 

novice teachers in Indonesia 

may face in developing a 

professional identity, which, 

in this paper, refers to 

becoming a practitioner of 

cooperative learning...‟ (NA-

9) (M-2) 
  

In the example 6, the auhor 

used present tense in move 2 to 

define the purpose of the research by 

using of present verb „identifies’. 

This study has analyzed that the 

present tense is common used in the 

introduction, purposes, and 

conclusion.  

Example 7:  

(S-2) ‟...The method applied 

in this research was 

descriptive method. Data 

collection techniques used 

observation check list. There 

were three textbooks 

observed. The aspects that 

were observed consisted of 

content, presentation, 

language, and graphic…‟ 

(PS-11) (M-3) 
 

The example above shows 

that the author used past tense to 

explain the method/ materials/ 

subject, and procedure of the 

research. It can be seen by using of 

past participle such as ‘applied’, 

‘used’, and ‘observed’.  

The type of sentence in 

English RA abstacts also have 

analyzed in this study. As can be 

seen in the table 6, the most 

dominant type of sentence is simple 

sentence. It indicates that the simple 

sentence is understanable in RA  

abstracts. Although the simple 

sentence as dominant usage, the 

complex sentence also exists in the 

moves of abstarcts.  The example of 

simple sentence as below: 

Example 8: 

(S-1) This article reports a 

study on teachers‟ use of 

interaction strategies in 

English Language Teaching 

(ELT) in lower secondary 

level of education…‟ (NA-1) 

(M-1) 
 

In example 8 above abstracts 

use simple sentence, because in the 

sentence have main verb to express 

the moves of abstracts.  

Example 9: 

(S-9) „….Nevertheless, the 

study provides English 

language teachers of 

situations where anxiety is 



22 

 

most likely triggered in a 

NNS-NNS communication 

setting. (IA-9) (M-5) 

 

 In example 9, the author used 

complex sentence as the conclusion 

in move 5 of abstract. It can be seen 

by the use of lexicon „nevertheless’ 

as a mark of complex sentence. 

Actually, simple and complex 

sentences are choice to the authors as 

an expression in the moves of 

abstracts. The important point is 

simple or complex sentence used in 

moves to make the abstracts 

understandable for the readers.  

Metadiscourse devices 

consisted of hedges, attitudinal 

stance, and self- reference in RA 

abstracts written by three groups of 

authors. 

Table 7 concludes that the 

authors in usage of  hedges, 

attitudinal stance, and self- reference 

words are just a view. The total 

usage of hedges is 14 times (6,8%), 

attitudinal stance is only one time 

(0,4%), and self- reference words is 

10 times (4,6%) in the abstract. The 

example of hedges as folows: 

Example 10: 

(S-4) ‟... it could be said that 

the speech and behavior of 

students during the learning 

process…‟ (PS-17) (M-4) 

 

In example 10, the author 

used hedges in move 4 of abstarct. It 

can be seen by the use of lexicon 

‘could’ as an expression of the 

tentativeness and posibility . This 

study has analyzed that postgraduate 

students have dominant usage  of 

hedges. According to Zhang et al 

(2012) The possible reasons are 

might be the authors‟ lack of 

linguistic resources for expression of 

their own opinion and their 

relationship and interaction with their 

readers. It indicates that postgraduate 

students authors‟ should be improve 

the expressions of interactional 

metadiscourse. 

In addition, this study also 

has analyzed  the attitudinal stance. 

This study found only one the writer 

used attitudinal stance, this is 

example as below: 

Example 11: 

(S-4) „....School 

characteristics (the socio-

cultural context) and 

teachers‟ beliefs about ESP 

were clearly seen as the most 

influential factors on their 

low levels of efficacy ...‟ (IA-

1) (M-3) 

 

In the example above, the 

author used attitudinal stance as an 

expression of  the author‟s judgment 

in move 3 of the abstract. It can be 

found by the use of lexicon ‘clearly’ 

in the sentence..  

The last analyzed in the 

metadiscourse device is self-

reference. The example for self 

reference words is as follow: 

Example 12: 

(S-6) „…From these findings, 

the author makes 

recommendations …‟ (NA-6) 

(M-5) 

 

In example 12, the author 

using self- reference word  to define 

the move 5 of the abstract. The self- 

reference words should be not use in 



23 

 

the abstract, because self-  reference  

is a subjective words. The examples 

of self- reference in this study such 

as „the researcher’, ‘the author’, ‘I’, 

and so on. According to Zhang et, al 

(2012) he suggest that using self- 

reference might be ascribed to the 

author‟s preoccupation with trying to 

sound as objective as possible by 

avoiding any reference to himself/ 

herself or his/ her own study. This 

finding indicate that just a view 

authors used self- reference.  

 

3.1 The Differences and 

Similarities in Rhetorical Move 

and Linguistic Features in RA 

Abstracs Written by Three Groups 

of Authors. 

By comparing the three 

groups of authors, this study found 

that move 1 reaches the smallest 

frequency and used by only 25 

authors (41,7%). Especially for the 

postgraduate students have the 

minimum frequency than national 

and international authors. The 

similarities of the structure move in 

this research have in the same 

highest frequency with three moves, 

they are move 2, move 3, and also 

move 4. Those moves such as 

obligatory in the English RA abstract 

written by three group of authors.  

Second, the postgraduate 

students used past tense more 

dominant than present tense. 

Contrast with national and 

international authors, they are more 

dominant used present tense than 

past tense. In using hedges 

postgraduate students are highest 

frequency than national and 

international authors. The similarities 

of linguistic features also found in 

this study. First, in using voice three 

groups of author most dominant used 

active voice. Second, in type of 

sentence the three groups of authors 

most frequently used simple sentence 

in the abstract. The last, the three 

groups of authors have used self- 

reference in the minimum frequency.  

In addition, the quality of 

abstracts are in using complete move 

(Move 1, Move 2, Move 3, Move 4, 

and Move 5). In the corpus of this 

study, the quality of abstracts based 

on complete moves are just a view. It 

means the authors (postgraduate 

students, national and international 

authors) should be used the five 

moves in the abstracts. This 

suggestion in line with Swales 

(2009) who suggest that the five 

moves in the abstracts. As linguistic 

features in the English RA abstracts 

using Voice (active and passive 

voice), Tenses (past and present 

tense) , Sentence type (Simple and 

Complex sentence) are and option in 

the abstracts and minimize the usage 

of metadiscourse devices   (Hedges, 

Attitudinal Stance, and Self- 

Reference words).  

 

DISCUSSION 

The first objective of this 

research is  to identify the common 

moves found in English RA abstract 

by three groups of authors in Applied 

Linguistics. The result showed that 

the dominant move of abstracts 

based on the corpus of the study are 

frequently with move 2 (Present 

research/ Purposes), move 3 

(Methods/ Materials/ Subject/ 

Procedures), and move 4 (Results/ 



24 

 

Finding). The majority of authors 

began their abstract with the move 2 

(Present research/ Purposes). It 

indicate that for the postgraduate 

students, national authors, and 

international authors has three moves 

(move 2, move 3, and move 4) are 

obligatory and move 1, move 5 are 

optional in their English abstracts. 

This results are in line with Can, et al 

(2016) who found that the majority 

of authors discussed the results, 

purpose, and methodology in their 

abstracts more than implications of 

the findings or background 

information. It might be caused the 

existence of various forms could be 

because there are no explicit standard 

rules for decision on moves for 

abstracts (Crookes: 1986). 

 There are some possiblity of 

English asbtracts in the corpus of the 

study. The technical guideline of 

writting this journal from JOALL 

(2017)  implied that the abstract of 

research paper should contain title, 

purpose, method, and research 

finding. The statement in line with 

the result of postgraduate students‟ 

abstracts that majority of authors 

used three moves pattern. Author 

guidelines in the TEFLIN journal 

(2017) indicate that author guidelines 

for conceptual articles abstract 

maximal 100 words and for research 

based article maximal 200 word 

without any discription. IJES (2017) 

implied that the abstract no more 

than 150 word in length. Thus the 

corpus of the study have different 

structure moves in the English 

abstract. This finding show the 

similarities of Zang (2012), he found 

the most abstract in the dataset had 

three important moves Purposes, 

Method, and Product but lack the 

Introduction and Conclusion moves 

as described in Hyland‟s (2000) 

IPMPrC Model.  

Moreover, the qualified of 

abstracts should have five moves in 

abstracts such as move 1 

(Background/ introduction/ situation) 

move 2 (Present research/ 

Purposes), move 3 (Methods/ 

Materials/ Subject/ Procedures), 

move 4 (Results/ Finding) and move 

5 (discussion/ conclusion/ 

implication/ recommendation) 

suggested by Swales (2009). This 

suggestion in line with Patridge in 

Safnil (2014), he suggested that a RA 

abstract should have five moves 

(main aim, specific objective, reason, 

process and results). It means 

important to include move 1 and 

move 5 to inform the readers in the 

practical benefit of the research 

finding. 

The second results of this 

research is the common Linguistic 

Features found in English RA 

abstract in the corpus of the study. 

This study found that simple 

sentence become the highest 

frequently of the authors‟ used in 

English research article abstracts by 

three different groups of authors. 

Because of an abstract is a mini 

summary of the research, so the 

sentence represent of expression of 

the author‟s to make the reader easier 

find the key words of the research. 

The syntactical features has also 

voice, in this research the majority 

authors frequently used passive 

voice. This finding is in line with 

Zhang, et al (2012) who found that 

the total number of 20 abstracts the 

active voice used nearly twice as 



25 

 

frequently in the abstracts as the 

passive voice.  

Based on the results above, 

the authors are frequently used 

present tense in the English RA 

abstracts. Contrast to postgraduate 

students‟ dominance used past tense 

in their English RA abstracts. 

According to Swales (1990) 

mentioned that the use of tense (i.e. 

Present and past tense) are clear 

characteristics of abstract written in 

English „present tense‟ is used to 

refer to the information available in 

the article and „past tense‟ is used to 

stress the importance of the research 

results of findings. The next finding 

is hedges, attitudinal stance, and self- 

reference words. In this study the 

authors use hedges as expressions of 

tentativeness and possibility, but the 

highest frequently is postgraduate 

students‟. While only a few of the 

national and international authors 

used hedges. On the other hand, the 

attitudinal stance was found in 

international authors. Self- reference 

words were used in a view English 

abstract written by three groups of 

author. The possible reason 

according to Zhang, et al (2012) it 

might be the author‟s lack of 

linguistic resources for the 

expression of their own opinions and 

their relationship and interaction with 

their readers. This result in line with 

Safnil (2014) the finding indicated 

that the use of interactional 

metadiscourse devices are very rare 

and dominated by hedges mostly 

found in Move 4 while the use of 

attitudinal stance of the writers and 

self- reference words are even rarer 

in the abstract.  

The last objective of this 

research is the  differences of 

rhetorical move and linguistic 

features written by three groups of 

authors. From the result and 

discussion above, it can be seen there 

are differences of rhetorical moves. 

First, by comparing the three groups 

of authors this study found that move 

1 (Background/ introduction/ 

situation) have 25 (41,7%). 

Especially for the postgraduate 

students have the minimum 

frequency than national and 

international authors.Second, 

postgraduate students dominantly 

used past tense than present tense. 

Contrast with national and 

international authors, they are most 

dominant used present tense than 

past tense. Third, in using hedges 

postgraduate students are highest 

frequency than national and 

international authors. 

CONCLUSION  

The data were obtained to 

answer the research question in 

analyzing the rhetorical structure and 

linguistic features by three groups of 

authors in Applied Linguistic. As the 

results of this study, it can be 

concluded as follows. The common 

moves used by postgraduate 

students, national and international 

authors found in the abstracts are 

move 2 (Present research/ 

Purposes), move 3 (Methods/ 

Materials/ Subject/ Procedures), and 

move 4 (Results/ Finding). The 

common Linguistic Features used by 

postgraduate students, national 

authors, and international authors are 

active voice, present tense, simple 

sentence, and hedges. The 

postgraduate students used move 1 

(Background/ introduction/ situation) 

fewer than national and international 



26 

 

authors. They used dominantly past 

tense than present tense, and 

obtained the highest frequency in 

using hedges. 

 

5.1 Suggestion 

Based on the reseach finding 

that has been concluded above, 

some suggestions are proposed as 

follow. This study suggests that in 

writing RA abstracts a writer should 

adjust the commonly used rules the 

abstract especially in using 5 moves 

in the abstracts. For further 

research, they can propose in other 

institution of higher education from 

other disciplines. Due to the limited 

data of this study, the findings in the 

study need to be tested in larger 

scale studies.  

REFERENCES 

 

Atkinson. P, Coffey. A. (1996). 

Makin Sense of Qualitative Data: 

Complementary Research Strategies. 

Michigan: Sage Publications. 

 

Bathia. K. V. (1993). Analysing 

Genre: Language Use in 

Professional Settings. London: 

Longman. 

 

Bhatia, Vijay. (1997). “Genre 

Analysis - Step by Step.” Journal of 

Linguistics, no. 19: 207–40. 

 

Cookes, G. (1986). Towards a 

Validated Analysis of a Scientific  

Text Structure. Applied Linguistics, 7 

(1), 57-70. 

 

Craswell, J, Plano. C. V. (2007) 

Designing and Conducting Mixed 

Method Research. Thousand Oaks: 

Sage. 

 

Can. S, Karabacak. E, Qin J. (2016).  

Structure of Moves in Research 

Article Abstracts in Applied 

Linguistics. MDPI. V 4, 23- 38. 

 

Celik, S.S. & Aydin, S. (2016). Wiki 

effect on English as a foreign 

language writing achievement. 

Global Journal of Foreign Language 

Teaching. 6(4), 218-227. 

 

Golebiowski, Z. (2009). Prominent 

messages in Education and Applied 

Linguistics abstracts: How do 

authors appeal to their prospective 

readers? Journal of Pragmatics, 

41(4), 753-769. 

 

Hyland. K., Tse, P. (2005) 

Evaluative that constructions: 

signaling stance in research abstract. 

Fuction of Language, 12 (1), 39-63. 

 

Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary 

Discourse: Social Interactions in 

Academic Writing. London: 

Longman. 

 

Kusnadi. T and Bharati. D. (2012). 

Developing an english instructional 

material for bridging course 

program. English Education Journal, 

2(2), 207-211. 

 

Pho, P. D (2010). Linguistic 

realizations of rhetorical 

structure a corpus- based study 

of research article abstract and 

introducion in applied 

linguistics and educational 

technology. 

 

Ren. H., Y. Li (2011). A comparison 



27 

 

study on the rhetorical moves of 

abstract in published research 

articles and master foreign  

language thesis , English 

Language Teaching, v. 4(1), 

162- 166. 

 

Safnil (2014) The Discourse 

Structure and Linguistic Features of 

Research Article Abstracts in English 

by Indonesian Academic. Bengkulu: 

Asian ESP Journal Vol.10 (Issue 2) 

(pp:191-224). 

 

San. L. Y, Tan H. (2012). A 

comparative study of the rhetorical 

moves in abstracts of published 

research articles and students‟ term 

papers in the field of computer and 

communication systems engine. 

International Journal of Applied 

Linguistics And English Literature, v 

1(7) 40-50. 

 

Saewae. S, Tangkiengsirisin. S. 

(2014). Rhetorical Variation across 

Research Article Abstracts in 

Environmental Science and 

Applied Linguistics. English 

Language Teching. V 7 (8) 

81-93. 

 

Suntara. W, Usaha S. Research 

article abstracts in two related 

disciplines: rhetorical 

variation between linguistics 

and applied linguistics. 

English Language Teaching, 

v 6 (2) 84-99. 

 

Swales, J. M (2004).  Research 

analysis: English in Academic and 

Research Settings. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press 

 

Swales. J. M,  C. B Feak. (2009) 

Abstract and The Writing of 

Abstracts. United States: Michigan 

Press. 

 

Tseng , F.  (2011). Analysis of move 

structure and verb tense of 

research article abstract in 

Applied Linguistics journal's, 

International Journal of English 

Linguistics, 1(2) , 27- 39 

 

Yik San, Lam, and Helen Tan. 

(2012). “A Comparative Study 

of the Rhetorical Moves in 

Abstracts of Published Research 

Articles and Students‟Term 

Papers in the Field of Computer 

and Communication Systems 

Engineering.” International 

Journal of Applied Linguistics 

& English Literature 1 (7): 40–

50. 

doi:10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.7p.40. 

 

Zhan, B, Q. B. T. Thuc and I , 

Pramoolsook (2012). Move and 

linguistic realizations: English 

research article abstract by 

Vietnamese argicultural  

researchers, The Asean ESP 

Journal ,v. 8(3), 126- 149.