ABSTRACT
Much L2 writing research focuses not on learner texts but on target texts that are usually published in some appropriate venue and often, but not always, written by native speakers. A large portion of this work has been conducted using a Swalesian (e.g., Swales, 1990, 2004) approach to explain the discourse moves and accompanying language in genres such as research articles or business reports. For example, one might describe the various parts and subparts (i.e., moves and steps ) of the literature review to a research article. With the growth of corpus methods, more and more research analyzes texts for specific grammatical structures, vocabulary, or phrases. Other research may analyze published articles or dissertations focusing on the function of certain structures such as integral citations (i.e., citations in which the author’s name appears outside of the parentheses). What most of these analyses of nonlearner texts have in common is the goal of making features of specific genres explicit to L2 writers or to teachers of L2 writers. Some studies analyze genres without directly discussing teaching implications, but most of the research that we discuss in this chapter seems intended to benefit the teaching of writing (and reading) to L2 learners. In this chapter, we detail the purposes that researchers have for analyzing target texts, classify the various types of analyses that have been done, and discuss issues that researchers need to consider when planning such research. We end with a discussion of a focal study.
Purposes for Analyzing Target Texts
