The Genre Of Introductions Of Theses: Towards The Application Of Genre Analysis To Academic Writing

AbStractAcadendc writing is an important and difficult type of discoursefor student writ6rs. It is patticulariy problematic for non-native sPeakers;however, the t6aching of the research paper to graduat6 studentS inffona has not ben given due att6ntion it needs. Neither is the proPert6aching area much emphasized. In recent years there have beenconsiderable int6rest in using a genre-based approach, i.e. genresbasedpedagogy that takes genre analysis as a tOol, for developing the t6achingof ESL students. The purpose of bos study is tO investigat6 the currentstat6 of the wrihng practice of the Introduction section, which is a majorcomponent of academic research papers or theses. This study appliedSwales' "for-Move" sbocture of Introductions and used threestatisticaI methods tO t6st the samples chosen frOm six universihes orcolleges in north China. Based on the statistical resultS. the authoranalyzed the factOrs that had caused the success or failure in the writingof the Introduchon sections and explored the effeCtive ways to apply themuch-touted genre-based Pedagogy to the acadendc writing practice ofChnese student5 of English, help them tO standardize their academicwriting in English, and tO achieve cornmunicative goals in their writing,and raise their writing ability as a whole.Swales' CARS (Creative A Research Space) model, which is posedin his monograph Ger1re A1mlysis: E'1glish i1l Acadealic and ResearchSofho, is applied tO thes study. This model has been widelyrecoghzed in acadendc cornmunity of genre analysis as a universal tOoltO be adopted in the analysis of acadendc writing (Kay & Dudley-Evansvb1998; Alice Sinclair 2000; Qin Xiubai 2000). In ffos model, "Estabhshing atQn.itOry, Establlshing a niche Occupying a niche" (Swales 199():141) arebasic Moves of Introductions of research articles, and each Move isrealed by pAncular st6ps based on differnt fUnctions they serve.This investigahon randomly selectOd 80 samples of IntToductions ofMA theses majoring in English LangUage and llteratUre from sixuniversities or colleges in north ouna. In order tO contrast similaritiesand differences of successfUl intrOduction writing and unsuccessfUlintroduction writing, the author divided the samples intO 4 groupsaccording tO the universities or college from which they were selectedand 3 partS according to the research fields of the samples. Then. theauthor labeled the sarnples with Moves and St6ps based on the genericsbocture of Introduction for statistical analysis.First, the author used Binondal ixstribution tO computO theprobability of formality to the "Three-Move-St6p" structure of theIntroduction writing in MA theses and the Poisson distribution of eachgroup/part (This method is usefUl when samples are small and theprobability is less than 0.0001). On the basis of the resuItS, the authordeduced the current st8t6 of Introduction writing of Population. Second,the author used Kruskal and Wallis One-itQm Variance t6st. Thisstatistical t6st is very usefUl when we wish to Anow if more than tWoindePendent setS of data show a sighficant overall difference inmagnitude of variable we are interest6d in. Because St6p 3 -- "Reviewingprevious research" in Move 1 (Establishing a tOrritOry) plays a veryAnportant part in Introduction writing, this St6p should be t6sted tOAnow whether there was sighcant difference of reIative frequenciesV1their Intfoduction writing of the MA theses. In order tO meet therequirementS of ffos t6st, the author made crit6ria tO mark the scoresand then transformed them intO ranks and calculated the sum of theserN tO draw a conclusion. mrd, the author used the "Goodness of fir'of ch-Square test tO check whether there was sighficant dtherencebetween the obserVed frequencies of each vtriable (only obligatorySteps of the three Moves considered in the test) and the exPeCtedfrequencies of each vtriable. The resultS of Chi-Square t6st r...