“In this paper I will discuss…”: Current trends in academic writing

Corpus-based genre analysis studies not only describe the lexico-grammatical, discoursal and rhetorical features of academic writing in various disciplines but also reveal how these features change over time. In this respect, findings obtained through academic genre research potentially generate new pedagogical proposals or at least lead to a critical review of current practices in EAP writing programs. However, guidelines presented in academic writing manuals rarely respond to disciplinary variations revealed by research studies and are rarely based on analysis of authentic texts, actual practice and scientific evidence. A review of corpus-based genre analysis studies suggests that rhetorical aspects of academic writing such as authorial identity markers, citations and rhetorical moves have received considerable attention recently. This paper presents an overview of the findings in current research focusing on rhetorical aspects of academic writing and discusses the implications of these findings for EAP writing pedagogies.