By employing Chen and Kuo's (2012) framework, this study comparatively investigated the rhetorical differences/similarities existing in the Literature Review chapters of Master of Arts (MA) theses authored by international and Iraqi MA students in the field of applied linguistics. The results showed that almost half of the international LR chapters had Introduction -- Body -- Conclusion progression, but this structure was rare in Iraqi ones. Move 1 (Establishing one part of the territory) was conventional whereas Move 2 and Move 3 were both optional in the corpus. Analysis of steps showed that international students used the step of Related research reviewing more than Iraqi counterparts for the realization of Move 1. International students justified the significance of their study by the step of Gap indication whereas Iraqi students resorted to the step of Concluding one part of the research. Move 3 was commonly occurred by the use of Indicating research aims step in the two sets of LR chapters. Generally, the findings show that, in writing LR chapters, Iraqi MA students attempted to be familiar with their area of research interest rather than to cast their critical approaches to the current status of the established research in the literature. These findings call for a genre-based pedagogy in academic writing to sharpen the awareness of Iraqi MA students of the functions of each move and step in LR chapters in applied linguistics.