Move Patterns in Iranian Efl Learners' Written Summaries of Short Stories: Probing the Would-Be Role of Gender and Writing Proficiency

3 Abstract: The ability to write an effective summary might be regarded as one of the most important writing skills a college student is supposed to acquire. To gain an adequate level of expertise in summary writing, learners need to draw on sound strategies, among the least-heeded instances of which mention might be made of the use of overriding move patterns that configure any piece of academic writing. In an attempt to bring the educational/academic stakeholders into closer terms with the implications of move analysis for the partially- neglected, yet prominent skill of summary writing, the researchers in the current study amassed a corpus of 141 written summaries of 4 short stories from 55 BA English Literature students at Urmia State University. Resorting to a top-down approach in analysis of discourse, the researchers, then, went about the analysis of the obtained data based on the Swalsian definition of move. Later, in their hunt for the possible impact of writing power on the utilization of different move patterns, the researchers divided the corpus into three groups of weak, average and strong writings. Finally, the corpus was divided based on students' gender to compare the patterns of moves used by male and female students. The study led to the extraction of seven overriding moves, two of which, i.e. 'plot' and 'climax' were rendered obligatory. Furthermore, in line with the gained upshots, a significant relationship was found to hold between degree of strength of WSSS (written summaries of short stories) and the moves used in them. Ultimately, based on the findings, a significant correlation was reported to be at work between students' gender and the moves used in their WSSS.