Swales's ‘Moves’ and the Research Paper Assignment.

The article reports on the usage of Swales's ‘Moves’ in research paper assignment by composition students in the U.S. Most first-year composition students do not define the research paper task the way college teachers would like them to. The students do not necessarily produce papers overwhelmingly superior to their previous essays and worthy of publication in a scholarly journal. They do learn to view themselves as original researchers. The author does not require that all students adopt the localized-field-research approach, let alone that they all use Swales's moves in their introductions.