A Genre Study of Cross-gender and Cross-cultural Variations in IELTS Essays
- Department of English, Maragheh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Maragheh, Iran
Received: 2022-03-04
Revised: 2022-03-19
Accepted: 2022-07-14
Published in Issue 2022-08-01
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of New Trends in English Language Learning (JNTELL)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Abstract
Writing essays and articles has long been considered as a crucial mode of written discourse which is a
difficult type of text for students, especially for English as foreign language (EFL) learners. Writing
essays also makes up a significant part of the International English Language Test System (IELTS), as
one of the most reputable English tests that is used to assess the language proficiency of those intending
to study or work in an English-speaking context. This study offers a contrastive genre analysis of the
essays written by male and female, and native and non-native writers in IELTS tests. The foremost
purpose of the study is to discover whether native and non-native writers utilized the same rhetorical
techniques in composing IELTS essays. Grounded on Swales’ (1990) CARS genre framework, this
research proposed a modified model for argumentative essays. The findings show some variations
between male and female, native and non-native writers. The article has theoretical and pedagogical
implications for teachers, learners, material developers, and syllabus designers, too.
Keywords
- Academic writing,
- CARS model,
- Move analysis,
- IELTS writing,
- Genre analysis
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