Move analysis of acknowledgement sections written by Thai EFL graduate students

The study aims to investigate the generic structure, frequency, and patterns of moves found in the acknowledgement sections written by Thai EFL graduates. Sixty acknowledgement sections from Thai EFL graduate students in the disciplines of English Language Teaching (ELT), Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), and English as an International Language (EIL) were selected from Thammasat University's library website or the Chulalongkorn University Intellectual Repository (CUIR). These examples were analyzed according to Hyland's (2004) move structure of acknowledgement. The data analysis was categorized into three parts: (1) move structure and its occurrence, (2) percentage of move frequency and categorization, and (3) move patterns. The findings revealed that the majority of acknowledgement sections written by Thai EFL students contained moves indicated in Hyland's (2004) move structure of acknowledgement. However, students exhibited unique styles in arranging the moves within their sequences. In other words, they often placed the primary move at the end of the acknowledgements or used the last move at the beginning of their sections. Additionally, no Move 3.1 (Accepting responsibility) was found in the corpus, but a newly discovered move, Move 3.3 (Recommending the readers), was identified. Regarding move frequency, the move Move 2 (Thanking) appeared in every acknowledgement section and was considered an obligatory move (100%). Conversely, (1) Move 3 (Thanking for resources) had the lowest frequency in the corpus (6.67%) and was an optional move. Lastly, in terms of move patterns, the sequence M2.1-M2.2- M2.3-M2.4 was the most popular among the 24 patterns analyzed (25%), followed by M2.1-M2.2-M2.4 (16.67%) and M2.1-M2.2-M2.4-M2.3-M2.4 (10%).