3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature ® The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies Vol 27(3), September 2021 http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2021-2703-02 22 Expert Writers’ Recommendations in Economics Research Articles: Implications for the Teaching of English for Academic Purposes MAY SIAW-MEI LIU Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia JASON MIIN-HWA LIM Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia jasonlim@ums.edu.my ABSTRACT The presentation of economics research results often constitutes the climax of data-driven research articles in the discipline, but how writers make recommendations based on their results remains a fertile area for an in-depth investigation. To date, no research has been conducted to ascertain the extent to which economics researchers incorporate such recommendations, and how they use language resources to perform the communicative functions involved. Our genre-based study employed the Swalesian move-step analytical framework to examine the occurrence of this pivotal rhetorical category, which makes suggestions based on research findings in economics. This largely qualitative analysis was triangulated via interviews with specialist informants in the field. Our results have shown that recommendations, being a quasi-obligatory move that comprises two noteworthy optional steps, are strategically linked with not only research results but also limitations of the research being reported. The expert writers employ a wide spectrum of language resources, particularly adjectives depicting indeterminacy and noun phrases denoting industrial and policy implications, to tacitly accentuate the value of their results. In regard to pedagogical implications, it is suggested that instructors devise exercises requiring novice writers to construct sentences involving suggestion indicators and verb phrases signalling epistemic modality while guiding learners to make recommendations for future research. With respect to recommendations for practical applications, text-completion exercises may be designed to familiarise learners with the use of active clauses containing nominalisations, which are largely intended to minimise self-mentions and increase objectivity while proposing actions to be taken in real-life settings. Keywords: English for academic purposes; discourse analysis; genre analysis; academic writing; recommendations INTRODUCTION It is widely acknowledged that the research article (RA) constitutes one of the main channels needed to communicate research results to the rest of the academic fraternity (Dahl, 2009; Swales, 2004). Given that it is the “central genre of knowledge production” (Yang & Allison, 2003, p. 365), the academic discourse community is understandably concerned about guarding the quality and standard of the research article, which can be seen in relation to how the academic community imposes specific discoursal conventions on their writers (Swales, 2004). Knowledge of such academic conventions in the writing of research articles in English is particularly needed in situations where novice writers working in bilingual and multilingual settings are expected to get their papers accepted for publication (Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Li & Flowerdew, 2020; Xu & Nesi, 2019). Nonetheless, academic research writing has been acknowledged by many as a complex process involving different underlying conventions which affect the language, structure, style and treatment of information that are often influenced by preferred disciplinary practices (Creswell, 2015). Due to the complexities involved in writing research articles, previous researchers in the field of English for Academic Purposes (e.g., Hirano, 2009; Lim, 2019; Samraj, 2002; Swales, 2004) have devoted