Research Article Abstracts (RAAs) have become a time-saving educational device for members of any discourse communities while academically searching for possible academic endeavors such as reading literature, searching for theoretical assumptions, or probing possible research variables to be investigated. Demystifying how published research abstracts are structured would offer the second language learners, teachers and novice writers specifically Filipino academic writers who aspire to publish their work, with a wide range of rhetorical preferences in shaping their own abstracts. Therefore, this study aimed at analyzing the rhetorical moves and cyclicity of moves which are present in the published research article abstracts written by Filipino academic writers in applied linguistics. Thirty such abstracts were extracted from different applied linguistics journals and have been selected under similar contextual conditions. The results revealed that in terms of realized moves, the predominant move is Move 5-Discussing the Research (DTR) implying that the writers consider the move to be the most important. In terms of move occurrences, Move 2-Presenting the Research is present in all research abstracts. In the analysis of cyclicity of moves, the linear pattern consist all the moves preponderantly found in the abstracts examined. This pattern conforms to a certain claim that, for an abstract to be well structured, it is necessary that the moves are sequenced in one logically linear order. A number of pedagogical implications are provided for ELT and for future research.