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pp.87-112
Park Hai-kyong & Jeon Ji-hyeon. 2014. Move analyses of English job application letters: A case of Korean college students. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 22(1). The purpose of this study is to examine the rhetorical structure of English job application letters written by Korean college students. College students were asked to write job application letters as an assignment for their Business English class. A move-analysis was conducted for the obtained college students' application letters. Then, the results were compared to the authentic application letters written by (1) Korean workers who obtained the interview and the job through their application letters and (2) native English-speakers who were in search of jobs in Korea. The results indicated that there were no consistent differences among the three group statistically. However, the authentic letters from the Korean and the English workers showed similar patterns in move sequence, frequency, and length, which was different from those written by the college students. The Korean college students seemed to use all the moves in their letters, whereas the other two groups seemed to focus more on promoting candidature(Move 5) for the communicative purpose of a job application letter. The present study suggests that an understanding of both the rhetorical patterns and the communicative purpose (i.e., to obtain an interview opportunity in the case of submitting a job application letter) should be emphasized in the genre writing process.
