Genre Analysis Of Research Article Introductions: A Comparison Between English And Chinese Introductions

Nowadays, English has become an important communication language in the world. In academia, English is also the most widely used language. Many scientific books and journals are published in English. So, written English, especially genre and genre analysis, has attracted many linguists'attention. In research articles (RAs) analysis, the section of introduction is considered to be the most troublesome part attracting more researchers'interests. In all of the studies, John Swales'Create A Research Space Model is the widely accepted result.The research is a study about the similarities and differences of the generic patterns of RA introductions, which are written by English writers in English and by Chinese writers in Chinese. The analysis is based on a corpus of forty RA introductions in the fields of linguistic and language teaching. Twenty English RA introductions are selected from two English journals: The Journal of English for Specific Purposes and The Journal of Language Teaching Research, and twenty Chinese RA introductions are selected respectively from《现代外语》(The Journal of Modern Foreign Language) and《外语教学与研究》(The Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research), which are published in Chinese. In the analysis, the generic patterns of English and Chinese RA introductions are determined according to Swales'CARS model. The results show that the English RA introductions published in recent years do not comply with CARS model completely, and some additional moves appear in these introductions, such as"background information"which is not included in Swales'CARS model but appears in many English RA introductions. On the other hand, Chinese RA introductions support CARS model in general, only some specific moves or steps aren't consistent with it. And in Chinese introductions, the move"Additional Instruction"which the author summarizes from the analysis results appears in many Chinese RA introductions. Chinese RA writers prefer to be modest and less aggressive, so some moves are different from the English introductions. Unlike English RA introductions, Chinese writers avoid evaluating and criticizing other researchers'works in Move1 Step3"Reviewing Items of Previous Literature".The main purposes of the study are to compare the generic patterns of English with Chinese RA introductions to summarize the similarities and differences between them, and make contrastive analysis between the generic patterns of English and Chinese RA introductions and CARS Model. Then the study present some help for the teaching of English and Chinese academic writing.