A Case Study Of Genre Analysis Of Introductions To Master’s Theses In The Field Of Applied Linguistics

Genre and second language writing is one of the current research hotspots in the field of second language acquisition.In the academic context,there have been an increasing number of discourse studies on the writing of introduction to published research articles.However,little attention is given to the introduction to studentproduced academic genres,especially for the Master’s thesis.Besides,the evolving nature of genre and the process of thesis writing remain largely unexplored and research methods adopted by previous research are one-fold in general,normally corpus-based genre analysis.Therefore,the present study first investigates the writing of thesis introductions in the field of applied linguistics by adopting a revised CARS(Creating a Research Space)model,then examines the evolving nature of genre by comparing thesis introductions written before and after the promulgation of the “Double First-Class” Initiative,and finally attempts to reveal the instructional process of thesis writing by conducting semistructured interviews with university teachers.It is worth noting that the University investigated in the present study changed the major Pedagogy to Applied Linguistics under the background of the “Double First-Class” Initiative.Hence,the present study carries out a comparative study of thesis introductions written before and after the Initiative,aiming to explore the potential impact of the promulgation of the Initiative on the guidance and writing of Master’s thesis.Research findings indicate that the writing of thesis introductions basically follows certain norms and requirements,and reflects the disciplinary characteristics of applied linguistics,that is,to fully pay attention to and solve practical problems.In addition,the obvious circularity of moves and steps is consistent with previous studies.However,there are also excessive cycles of moves and steps in thesis introductions,which to some extent reflects the lack of thinking and writing ability of Master’s students.Moreover,no distinct evolvement of the writing of thesis introductions is spotted at the macro level,which means that there are no major changes in the overall structure and content of thesis introductions written before and after the Initiative.On the contrary,the use of moves and steps in thesis introductions varies a lot.Interview results reveal that different supervisors have different guiding and communicating patterns with Master’s students and also have different understanding of the role of supervisors.The interviewed supervisors believe that the promulgation of the Initiative has no obvious impact on the way they guide Master’s students.The present study contributes to reflecting the writing of thesis introductions,in order to improve the quality of thesis writing and construct a healthy supervisor-supervisee relationship.