This document analyzes the rhetorical structure and linguistic features of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom lessons. It examines 24 EAP lessons taught by experienced teachers. The analysis reveals that EAP lessons consist of three phases: opening, activity cycle, and closing. Each phase contains distinct rhetorical moves and linguistic realizations. The opening phase orients students and sets up the lesson framework. The activity cycle phase introduces and reviews classroom activities. The closing phase wraps up the lesson and previews future work. Key lexical phrases used to signal the structure of each phase are also identified.

1. •
• SAAD SAMEER DHARI
• ASHRAF MOHAMMAD
• MAAD ABDULELLAH
• TAHA MAHMOUD
• MUNTAHA ALI

2. AGENREANALYSIS OFEAPCLASSROOM
LESSONS
JOSEPH J. LEE
EAP : English for Academic Purposes
ESP : English for Specific Purposes

3. INTRODUCTION
• This genre-oriented analysis explores the rhetorical structure and
linguistic features of EAP classroom lessons.
• The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 EAP classroom lessons
taught by highly experienced IEP teachers.
• Using a focused Swalesian move analysis combined with corpus-
based methods, the study examines the rhetorical moves in different
phases of EAP lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to signal
discourse organization in each phase.

4. INTRODUCTION
• In addition, four EAP teachers were interviewed in order to gain
insider perspectives into their discursive practices.
• The analysis reveals that EAP lessons consist of three major
phases, each with three distinct moves, and with varying
linguistic realizations

5. INTRODUCTION
• In the past few decades, Swales’s (1990) conceptualization of genre
has been critically influential in English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) scholarship, as it has
played a central role in providing a robust framework for researching
specialized discourses and offering insights for second language (L2)
pedagogy (Paltridge, 2013).
•

6. • A genre, according to Swales (1990), is “a class of
communicative events” recognized and employed by particular
discourse communities whose “members…share some set of
communicative purposes” (p. 58).
• In other words, genres are considered communicative strategies
for accomplishing social actions of specific discourse
communities rather than the culture at large (Hyland, 2007).

7. • Although genres vary, and manipulating them is possible, they are
nonetheless identifiable by particular discourse community
members due to their “prototypical” schematic structure, or the
most typical realization of patterns of the events.
• Structural patterns are developed through a series of rhetorical
moves (and component steps), or communicative strategies used to
achieve certain communicative goals, and the lexico-grammatical
features used to realize them

8. • These move sequences represent a genre's schematic structure
in accomplishing deliberate social actions and lead to the
coherent understanding of the discourse.
• A text, therefore, must include certain features for it to be an
exemplar of that particular genre. While genres are dynamic,
flexible, and open to change in response to community
members' needs and contextual changes, they have differing
degrees of choices and constraints, and violating genre
expectations comes with unpredictable consequences.

9. Our study shows that the lecture genre is a highly structured
communicative event with recurrent rhetorical patterns and
routinized linguistic characteristics for achieving broad
communicative purposes, in this case pedagogical.
They also illustrate various strategies lecturers use to
compensate for the perceived constraints inherent in real-time
discourse with a live audience, as well as opportunities
available in constructing coherent and meaningful lectures.

10. • However, these studies have primarily concentrated on the
distribution and functions of teacher and student contributions to
the tripartite IRF exchange, with little attention given to the
schematic structure of a language lesson.
• Although classroom instruction sometimes involves teachers'
making extemporaneous decisions in response to their
assessment of classroom situations and improvising accordingly,
L2 lessons are planned, structured, and routinized communicative
events, with a beginning, middle, and end, performed by a
specific community of language teachers.

11. • Further, they occur in particular social settings, involve primarily
two participant types, consist of recognizable tasks, and have a
broad communicative purpose. While descriptions for opening,
sequencing, and closing language lessons are provided
(Richards & Lockhart, 1996)
• The study examines the rhetorical moves in different phases of
EAP classroom lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to
signal discourse organization in each phase.

12. • In addition, the study includes interviews with EAP
teachers in order to gain insider perspectives into their
discursive practices.
• Thus, this study seeks to show the relevance and power
of Swales's move analysis combined with corpus
techniques and qualitative interviews in investigating an
under-examined genre engaged in by EAP teachers.

13. 2. Corpus and procedures
• The corpus consists of 24 EAP lessons taught by four highly
experienced EAP teachers from the second language
classroom discourse (L2CD) corpus created by the author.
• Three teachers were female and one was male, and they
worked in an intensive English program (IEP) at a large urban
university in the US Southeast.
• Baker taught structure and composition, Burt and Mary taught
oral communication, and Lillian taught reading and listening.
• Each teacher's lessons were video-recorded six times over a
16-week semester, totaling 28 h.
• The first recordings occurred in weeks three and four, four
consecutive lessons then were recorded in weeks six to nine,
and the last recording took place in weeks 11e14.

14. • the following criteria were used to identify lesson boundaries:
(1) explicit linguistic reference to lesson shift; (2) changes in
prosody plus physical movements; (3) lengthy pause plus a
discourse marker (e.g. okay) produced with a falling tone;
and (4) lengthy pause plus non-verbal behavior (e.g.,
gesture, shuffling paper). This process led to the
identification of three major EAP lesson phases: opening,
activity cycle, and closing.
• In analyzing the corpus, a Swalesian (1990) genre analysis
was first applied in order to identify the communicative
purposes of EAP lessons, as expressed through the
recurrent rhetorical moves (and component steps) and
linguistic features that realize these movements.

15. • The rhetorical moves/steps were coded according to Biber, Connor,
and Upton's (2007) guidelines. It consisted of a recursive process
of reading the lesson transcripts and identifying and coding the
moves/steps in order to determine their communicative purposes.
• Then, to determine the conventionality of moves/steps, or “move
stability” (Kanoksilapatham, 2005), the frequency of each
move/step was recorded. For the present study, a move/step was
considered conventional when appearing 80% or higher and
optional when below 80%. Although the arbitrary cut-off frequency
is high, this conservative approach was taken due to the small
corpus size and speaker number (cf. Kanoksilapatham, 2005). To
mitigate analyst bias, a second coder independently coded a
randomly selected 15% of the corpus,5 or one lesson transcript
from each teacher's lessons.

16. • Additionally, using Antconc (v. 3.2.4, Anthony, 2011), a text
analysis and concordance tool, the corpus was analyzed for
the most frequent lexical phrases (DeCarrico &
Nattinger,1988), or clusters, used to signal discourse
organization. The corpus was divided into the three phases
(Table 2), and each phase was transferred to Antconc
separately.

17. Table 1
Description of the L2CD corpus.
Teacher Course Level Class
size
Class
meeting
Class
timed
No. of
lessons
Tokens
Baker Structure and
Composition
3 17 MWF 100
min
6 41,170
Burt Oral
Communication
2 13 MWF 50
min
6 39,719
Lillian Reading and
Listening
3 15 TTH 80
min
6 38,874
Mary Oral
Communication
3 15 MWF 50
min
6 59,875
Total 24 179,738

18. Table 2
Description of the L2CD lesson phases.
Phase Tokens Percentage Mean SD Range
Opening 18,641 10.38 776.71 506.57 114--1798
Activity Cycle 141,341 78.68 5889.21 1761.40 3737--9628
Closing 19,656 10.94 819.00 521.97 94--2030
Total 179,638 100.00 7484.92 1721.67 5085--11,448

19. Findings and discussion
• Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in the opening phase
• 1- The opening phase functions to orient students to the
current lesson by signaling the start of lesson, informing
students of important course-related matters, and setting up
lesson framework.
• M1:
• Getting Started signals a lesson's official start. It is often
realized by a combination of a discourse marker and greeting .
• (1) okay good afternoon. (BU-D1)
• (2) uh i'm gonna get started. (L-D2)

20. • 2- M2: Warming up serves to highlight course-related
matters, look ahead to future lessons, and maintain rapport
with students before engaging in more substantive parts of the
lesson, similar to academic lecture introductions (Lee, 2009).
• M2S1: Housekeeping is used to make announcements, collect
and/or return homework, and offer reminders:
• (3) before we get started … i wanted to show you something
that Bill mentioned … (BA-D1)
• (4) if you have homework for me give it to me now. (BU-D5).

21. • M2S2: Looking ahead functions to inform students of upcoming
lessons:
• (5) i think maybe on Tuesday after the exam … we will have a
little bit of that speech and you can sort of see what the
president said about that okay? (L-D1)
• the optional M2S3: Making a digression allows teachers to
discuss issues less germane to course content, but those that
may be relevant in sustaining positive teachers student
relationship:
• (8) happy birthday to you Emilie yeah hopefully we'll have time
to sing to you at the end of class.

22. • 3- M3: Setting Up Lesson Agenda is optional. In Thompson's
(1994) study on lecture introductions, she found four steps for a
comparable move (Setting Up Lecture Framework): announcing
topic, indicating scope, outlining structure, and presenting aims.
In EAP lesson openings, however, this move is a rather brief
series of activities planned for the lesson.
• (10) um today we're gonna work a little bit with the lecture
notes, and um you're going to give me some feedback on, how
this course is going okay? (M-D3)

23. the most frequent lexical phrases in the opening
phase
• only two appeared once ptw or more: we're going to/ gonna
(1.77 ptw) and I'm going to/gonna (1.61 ptw). Teachers use
these phrases to indicate future actions, announce plans, and
refer to future lessons. Interestingly, we're going to/gonna is
often used for M2S2 and M3 (11), while I'm going to/gonna
primarily is used for M2S1 (12):
• (12) okay i have your tests, i'm gonna give them back to you at
the end of class today. (L-D3)

24. Table 3
Frequency of moves/steps in the opening phase.
moves Frequency (%) Conventionality
M1: Getting Started 24 (100) Conventional
M2: Warming Up 24 (100) Conventional
S1: Housekeeping 22 (91.7) Conventional
S2: Looking ahead 7 (29.2) Optional
S3: Making a digression 5 (20.8) Optional
M3: Setting Up Lesson
Agenda
7 (29.2) Optional

25. 3.2. Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in
activity cycle phase
• 4- M4: Setting Up Activity Framework is realized by two
conventional and four optional steps. Its primary purpose is to
announce and provide directions for activities. The
conventional M4S1: Announcing activity names the activity
students will perform:
• (14) the next thing we're going to do is, prepare, a little more
for our lecture. (M-D3)
• Similar to M4S1, the M4S2: Outlining activity procedures is
conventional:
• (16) so on the next page, with your partners at your desk, i
want you to answer the first four questions. looking at how it's
organized, noticing the main points … (BA-D2)

26. • The remaining M4 steps are optional
• M4S3: Modeling activity functions to demonstrate verbally
(often multimodally) how to complete activities:
• (17) so for example if you look up. and there's an X, through all
these times. and then, this is the first one that has not been
crossed off, that's your time. (L-D2)
• M4S4: Checking in serves to check on students'
comprehension. Noteworthy is the frequent use of yes/no
questions:
• (18) any questions? (M-D4)

27. • M4S5: Indicating activity time notifies learners of the time
allotted for activities:
• (19) i'm gonna give you 5 min, to talk with your groups, 5 min
(BU-D5)
• Finally, M4S6: Initiating activity signals the start of an activity.
• (20) okay so go ahead, practice these questions. (M-D5)
• 5- M5: Putting Activity in Context is the next pre-activity
move in this phase, and it is conventional (88%). While typically
absent in the initial activity, it appears in subsequent activities.
Its broad purpose is to contextualize an activity by building
and/or eliciting leaners' prior knowledge, offering justification,
and/or making intertextual links to prior lessons.

28. • M5S1: Building/activating background knowledge functions to
build and/or activate students' background knowledge of a topic
or activity. Its optionality is likely due to teachers' accomplishing
a similar function, particularly building background knowledge,
when they explicitly model how to complete an activity through
M4S3 above. Build and activate are combined because of the
difficulty of disentangling whether the EAP teachers were
developing or stimulating students' prior knowledge.
• (21) what are some components [of culture], that we talked
about. (BA-D4)
• In these examples, the teachers attempted to refresh learners'
preexisting knowledge of topics discussed previously.

29. • M5S2: Presenting rationale is a conventional step (87.5%) used
to articulate an activity's underlying purpose:
• (24) why is this useful. why are we doing this, activity. (BA-D1)
• M5S3: Referring to earlier lessons, when present, functions to
make connection between the current activity and specific
previous lessons:
• (26) do you remember what we were doing last time with
pronunciation? (M-D1)
• 6- M6: Reviewing Activity is employed to review the activity. It
is realized by three conventional and three optional steps.

30. • The conventional M6S1: Regrouping participants, according to
Mary, is a “coming-together sort of strategy” to reorient
learners. When the teachers sensed that enough time had
been spent on an activity, they moved to the center-front of the
classroom and verbally indicated their desire to regain control
of the class.
• (28) okay i'm gonna interrupt your discussion right now. (L-D4)
• The conventional M6S2: Establishing common knowledge
establishes what might be considered officially recognized
knowledge among class participants:
• (29) we're gonna take a look at what, your colleagues have
said. (L-D1)

31. • The optional M6S3: Following up is used to indicate what
teachers would like to do subsequently with an activity that has
been reviewed:
• (33) time is almost up and i know, some of you still have
questions we'll go over the answers to these when we meet
again on, Thursday, okay?
• The optional M6S4: Checking in serves to check on potential
questions students might have about previously established
common answers to an activity:
• (35) how are you at this point? (M-D6)

32. • providing feedback on learners' overall performances on
activities is accomplished through the conventional M6S5:
Evaluating student performance (87.5%). It is usually in the
form of positive appraisals:
• (36) okay, good. so we have a lot of good examples here. (BA-
D3)
• (38) okay some of you might need to practice them [keywords]
again this weekend okay? (M-D1)
• Similar to its related step in M5, the optional M6S6: Presenting
rationale offers teachers opportunities either to reinforce
rationale given prior to an activity or to supply previously
unstated justification: (39) if we do this a little bit every tie most
every time when we come together from now on, i think you'll
find you're reading a little bit fast, okey-dokey? (L-D2)

33. Moves/steps Frequency (%) Conventionality
M4: Setting Up Activity Framework 24 (100) Conventional
S1: Announcing activity 24 (100) Conventional
S2: Outlining activity procedure 24 (100) Conventional
S3: Modeling activity 12 (50) Optional
S4: Checking in 17 (70.8) Optional
S5: Indicating activity time 17 (70.8) Optional
S6: Initiating activity 13 (54.2) Optional
M5: Putting Activity In Context 21 (87.5) Conventional
S1: Building/Activating background
knowledge
16 (66.7) Optional

34. Moves/steps Frequency (%) Conventionality
M5s2 : Presenting rationale 21 (87.5) Conventional
S3: Referring to earlier lesson 10 (41.7) Optional
M6: Reviewing Activity 24 (100) Conventional
S1: Regrouping participants 24 (100) Conventional
S2: Establishing common
knowledge
21 (87.5) Conventional
S3: Following up 13 (54.2) Optional
S4: Checking in 12 (50)
S5: Evaluating student
performance
21 (87.5) Conventional
S6: Presenting rationale 10 (41.7) Optional

35. • Regarding lexico-grammatical features, Table 5 represents the
five lexical phrases occurring at least once ptw in this phase.
All phrases are predominantly used to realize M4, especially to
provide task instructions (M4S2). Considering the importance
• of clear instructions, this is not surprising. Unlike the opening
phase, where there is a greater sense of a collective
enterprise, this idea seems to be less represented in the
activity cycle phase. As shown in Table 5, you're going
to/gonna is the most frequent cluster:
• (40) okay, uh so you're gonna read, and i'm going to count the
time for you. when you finish reading. you're going to look up
• you're going to find out, the time that has not been crossed
out. and write that down. all right? (L-D2)

36. • Similarly, want you to, I want you, and I want you to also are
used to realize M4S2. Biber et al. (2004) found that I want you
to is a common lexical bundle in classroom teaching used to
direct students in performing an action. It acts as a “buffer” to
subsequent series of directives:
• (41) i want you to write down, the directions....i don't want you
to say what it is. you're going to yet, i just want you to give me
the directions. then you're gonna tell somebody else those
directions, and you're gonna see if your directions. tell them,
where you wanna go. okay? (BU-D1)

37. Rank Lexical phrase N Frequency (per 1000 words)
1 want you to* 39 1.98
2 you're going to/gonna 38 1.93
3 I want you* 34 1.73
3 I want you to* 34 1.73
Table 5
Most frequent lexical phrases in the activity cycle phase.

38. Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in the closing phase
• The closing phase functions to deal with homework,
announcements, and farewells.
• 7- M7: Setting Up Homework Framework functions to
establish a framework for homework assignments.
• The conventional M7S1: Announcing homework serves to
announce homework assignments and is realized
multimodally:
• (44) that ((T points at the whiteboard.)) is your homework.
okay? so your homework page fifty-three fifty-four fifty-five.
(BU-D2)
• (45) ((T points at the screen.)) so we have two homework
assignments for Friday, all right? all right. so homework for
Friday this page and bring your friend's notes and voice
recording too. okay? (M-D2)

39. • M7S2: Outlining homework procedure provides specific
homework instructions.
• (47) so on, page sixty-five sixty-six sixty-seven, you're given two
choices, and i want you to make a choice to decide which one of
those is the main idea, okay? (L-D3)
• M7S3: Modeling homework (48) and M7S4: Checking in (49)
serve similar functions as their comparable steps in M5 in the
activity cycle phase:
• (48) so if you‘re choosing for example Joon you have, symbols.
values. beliefs. which one do you like the most, what‘s your
favorite of those three. (BA-D5)
• (49) questions about the homework? (M-D4)

40. • 8- M8: Cooling Down shares similar broad purposes with M2
in the opening phase: to attend to course-related matters and/
or to discuss future lessons that may or may not have been
discussed in the lesson opening. The optional M8S1: Looking
ahead offers students a preview of upcoming lessons:
• (50) on Friday i'm going to finish the lecture, okay? and then, on
Monday we're gonna talk about the results of your interviews.
• (M-D6)
• the conventional M8S2: Housekeeping occurs frequently and
serves comparable functions:
• (51) okay i wanna give you back your test … and give you a
chance to look at things ask me questions. okay? (L-D6)

41. • 9- M9: Farewell is the final move in a lesson. Just as
M1 in the opening phase is used to formally start a
lesson, M9 formally signals a lesson's official end:
• (54) okay, see you later guys. have a nice weekend. (M-
D3)

42. Moves/ steps Frequency (%) Conventionality
M7: Setting Up
Homework Framework
24 (100) Conventional
S1: Announcing
homework
24 (100) Conventional
S2: Outlining homework
procedure
17 (70.9) Optional
S3: Modeling homework 6 (25) Optional
S4: Checking in 6 (25) Optional
M8: Cooling Down 24 (100) Conventional
S1: Looking ahead 17 (70.8) Optional
S2: Housekeeping 22 (91.6) Conventional
M9: Farewell 24 (100) Conventional

43. • In terms of lexical phrases, the closing phase includes four
clusters that appeared once ptw or more, three of which overlap
• (Table 7). However, there is a striking resemblance regarding
the types that are represented in this phase and the activity
cycle phase. This is partly due to the fact that M7 is similar to
M4, both of which establish frameworks for completing
assignments.
• The overlapping clusters want you to, I want you, and I want
you to are principally used to realize M7S2:
• (55) so on, page sixty-five sixty-six sixty-seven, you're given
two choices, and i want you to make a choice to decide which
one of those is the main idea, okay? (L-D3)

44. • In the activity cycle phase, you're going to/gonna is used
to provide activity instructions; in the closing phase, it is
used for a different purpose:
• on Friday you're going to write in class that's one of it's
our first timed writing … i'll give you, so many minutes … i
haven't decided yet. but you're gonna write something, on
Friday, in class. (BA-D1)

45. Table 7
Most frequent lexical phrases in the closing phase.
Rank Lexical phrase N Frequency (per 1000 words)
1 want you to* 39 1.98
2 you're going to/gonna 38 1.93
3 I want you* 34 1.73
3 I want you to* 34 1.73

46. Concluding remarks
• EAP lessons in this corpus consist of three phases: opening,
activity cycle, and closing. Although the rhetorical moves in
each phase occasionally progress in a linear sequence, the
EAP teachers mostly performed a complex, rather messy,
discursive maneuvering to realize the communicative purposes
of each phase and to achieve overall pedagogic goals.
• The opening phase is concerned principally with establishing
positive learning environments and reinforcing inter-lesson
continuity than with providing a cognitive road map for a lesson
(McGrath et al., 1992).

47. • teachers spend most of class time managing activities in
the activity cycle phase. This recursive cycle of setting up
and contextualizing activities and reviewing them allows
EAP teachers to establish appropriate learning conditions
and to achieve lesson objectives. This cycle is repeated
multiple times depending on the number of activity types
in a lesson.
• Finally, EAP teachers bring lesson closure by setting up
homework, informing students of course-related issues,
• sustaining inter-lesson connections, and wishing students
farewell as a means to continue maintaining positive
teacher student rapport.

48. • A few limitations of this exploratory study need to be pointed
out. First, the study's corpus included only four EAP teachers
working in one IEP utilizing an academic task-based
curriculum.
• Also, the L2CD corpus consists of only 24 EAP lessons, and
mostly of teacher speech directed to the whole class. To
confirm the present study's findings, future ESP genre-oriented
research of classroom discourse could analyze a larger corpus
(or a set of corpora) of EAP lessons from different teachers in
various teaching circumstances.

49. • In conclusion, although classroom discourse is a collaborative effort,
mutually constructed by both students and teacher,
• the teacher ultimately controls the content and structure of
classroom lessons. Therefore, L2 teacher education programs,
• particularly those preparing pre- and in-service EAP teachers, may
need to place greater importance to raising EAP teachers'
• awareness and understanding of the lesson genre. By becoming
more intimately familiar with the discursive and linguistic
• patterns of EAP lessons, L2 teacher education could assist teachers
in developing the discursive repertoire necessary to be
• effective in the classroom. Such classroom discourse competence
would allow EAP teachers to make classroom lessons more
• accessible, navigable, and meaningful for students in the process of
developing academic discourse competence.