abstract over the past two decades, applied linguists and language teachers have shown a great deal of interest in genre-centered approaches , mainly because of pedagogic concerns . this has been due to the need to help non-native readers enhance their ability to understand academic and scientific texts. following swales’ (1981) works on genre analysis, studies of different sections of research articles (ras) on various languages and fields have been carried out; however, texts of non-academic nature have been paid only scant attention. the main aim of this work was to investigate communicative moves of horoscopes, pieces of writing that always gain some attention at least just for entertainment. to this end, 30 horoscopes of three different types ( prophet, monthly, and indian) were chosen randomly and gone under detailed investigation for their move structure and linguistic realizations. consequently, three main moves were identified- starting the horoscope, predicting future events, and proposing the reader some suggestions for a better future. the present study offers a number of pedagogical implications for language teachers. key words: genre, communicative moves, horoscope, genre-centered approaches, linguistic realization.