Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Rhetorical Moves in Academic Writing

Writing an essay is a complex process, and as teachers of academic writing, we require our students to make sophisticated rhetorical moves in their essays, asking them to, in a foreign language, synthesise ideas, identify problems, make connections between abstract concepts and real life examples all from a variety of sources.

The academic genre, however, has developed its own ways of making rhetorical moves which are fairly standard. EAP teachers can take advantage of this to help students identify and apply rhetorical moves in their thinking and writing.

I like to be clear with my students, and I use a framework developed by Drown and Riedner to help students identify rhetorical moves in academic arguments. These templates are useful because they provide a scaffold for inexperienced writers for support. As students' linguistic and intellectual competence develops, they take ownership of the language and move beyond the support. Though this takes time, as students become more expert at identifying rhetorical moves, so they become more critical of others' and their own ideas.

Examples of rhetorical moves include:

Justifying an approach: 

  • I approach [my topic] by ______ to support and expand points about the significance of ____
  • This approach allos us to see evidence regarding _________, prompting further questions about _________

Identifying a complication

  • This explanation gets us [only so far] as [evidence] does not fit in to this explanation. Consequently, [reformulate the argument]
  • The case is not so simple, rather _________

Reformulating arguments

  • Although this term is often understood [in this way], in the context it means more [more complex, more nuanced, specific thing]
  • While [situation], in my context [slightly different situation]

Moving from the general to the specific

  • [Problem x] is a significant challenge, particularly [for specific focus]

Identifying a counterclaim

  • [Writer] claims that [idea]. However, in fact, [evidence] shows that this is not entirely true.
  • While some evidence suggests [one thing], others claim that [other thing]

Teaching tips:

  1. Students categorise the moves (for example, where in an essay might you expect to find these moves?)
  2. Students identify moves in a text/argument. Students read an article and find examples of various moves in a text (and make a note of the language used).
  3. Students write their own simple rhetorical moves.
  4. Students rewrite a text,applying some rhetorical moves to arguments.