Handout. Katherine Schaefer. Adapted from work by John Swales.
Overview: This handout describes a framework for analyzing empirical research papers in terms of “rhetorical moves”: essential functions that need to be executed for the paper to convey the results of empirical research. It is most applicable to Intro-Methods-Results-Discussion papers (IMRD) and its variants like IRDM.
Uses: This handout works well to help students read and write empirical papers in the natural sciences, some social sciences, and engineering. I have successfully used it in WRT105 and in upper-level writing courses in the natural and social sciences.
How do I use it in class? I introduce students to the handout and then ask students to use the framework to analyze a sample paper by highlighting instances of the moves and classifying the steps within the moves.
Note: The CARS handout is a subset of this framework, limited to introductions.
You can find the handout at this link.
Citations:
John Swales (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.
John Swales (2004). Research genres: Explorations and applications. Cambridge University Press.