There is burgeoning interest in investigating targeted sub-genres of research articles apart from employing Swales’ (1994) CARS model, considered as a generalized model that apparently captures all research articles across disciplines. This study investigates the discourse features of methodology sections of research articles employing Peacock’s (2011) framework. It is hoped that the established discourse features in this study may somehow serve as rhetorical guidelines in writing the methodology section attributable to ISI or high-impact journals and be adopted by non-ISI or non-high-impact academic writers to enable them to meet the standard criteria and writing-convention practices required by high-impact applied linguistics journals. Thirty (30) research articles extracted from the high-impact and non-high-impact applied linguistics journals were comprehensively analyzed in terms of physical characteristics, rhetorical moves, and cyclicity of moves. The findings revealed that high-impact academic writers were more prolix with respect to the number of words and paragraphs in writing their methodology than their counterpart. Moreover, it was found that there was one obligatory move (Move 1 Subjects/Materials) that both sets of academic writers employed. As the data suggested, Moves 3, Procedure, and 4, Data Analysis, seemed to be obligatory moves in non-high-impact journals. Conversely, the same moves seemed optional for some high-impact academic writers as the statistics revealed. Rhetorical variability was the probable reason for a number of cyclicity of moves found in the research article methodology produced by both sets of academic writers. Based on the results, several pedagogical implications and future research directions were provided.
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