Genre Analysis Of “Introduction” And “Conclusion” Of International Students’ MA Theses

With the implementation of the national strategy of strengthening the country through education and the deepening of the reform of educational evaluation,the improvement of quality and efficiency has been increasingly emphacized for the international education,and pertinent tertiary institutions have generally placed higher requirements for the cultivation quality of international students.As an important indicator to measure students’ academic proficiency and scientific research ability,theses are increasingly valued in the cultivation of international students.Therefore,this thesis purports to examine the generic features of the “introduction” and “conclusion” sections of MA theses produced by international students majoring in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages(TCSOL),focusing particularly on the move structure at the macro level and the metadiscourse markers at the micro level.The analytic model of move structures and the framework for analyzing metadiscourse markers employed in this thesis were adopted from Swales(1990),Bunton(2002,2005)and Hyland and Tse(2004).The “introduction” and “conclusion” sections from 100 MA theses by recently graduated Chinese and international students majoring in TCSOL from three universities in western China were randomly selected as the samples,and two corpora were then constructed,including 50 theses by international students and50 theses by Chinese students.Based on the corpora,the author used MAXQDA and PYTHON to code and retrieve the corpus,with an aim to illuminate the move structure and meta-discourse markers in the “introduction” and “conclusion” sections of MA theses by international and Chinese students,and then to highlight the generic features of international students’ MA theses in comparison to native Chinese speakers.Finally,some pedagogical implications are proposed for the teaching and learning of academic research and thesis writing by international students.The results of this study indicates that:(1)Compared with native Chinese students,the “introduction” and “conclusion” sections of international students’ MA theses are generally shorter and contain less information.(2)International students do not have adequate mastery of the complete move structure of the “introduction” and “conclusion”sections,and the lack of some steps leads to the weak effect of inclusion compared with native Chinese students’ MA theses.(3)International students have not yet fully mastered the basic structural paradigm of the “introduction” and “conclusion” sections of MA theses,so more new moves,unconventional moves and move-step combinations can be identified than Chinese students’ MA theses.(4)The number and frequency of metadiscourse markers used by international students in the “introduction” and “conclusion”sections are lower than those of native Chinese students,and the types of meta-discourse markers used by international students are fewer.(5)Meta-discourse markers preferred by international students in the “introduction” and “conclusion” are more colloquial than native Chinese students.By combining move structure analysis at the macro level and meta-discourse marker analysis at the micro level,this thesis analyzed the generic features of the “introduction”and “conclusion” sections of the MA theses of international students from a new perspective,and found that significant differences can identified between international students’ MA theses and native Chinese students’ MA theses,especially in move structures at the macro level.These findings provide reference for the teaching practice and research of Chinese academic writing.