A Move Analysis of Research Article Introduction Written by Indonesian Authors: The Case of Soft and Hard Sciences

Abstract

In scholarly international publication, the introduction is often seen by journal reviewers as the pivotal place to assess the contribution of the research. Therefore, genre analyses of research article introduction keep being concerned by many researchers of English for academic purposes to generate eligible models of writing introduction section. However, much is still less explored regarding the way NNES authors rhetorically organize the introduction across disciplines. This study seeks to compare rhetorical moves and steps of introduction between soft and hard science research articles. Eight research articles were collected from Indonesian authors. Swales' ( 2004) revised model of Creating A Research Space was used in the top-down stage. The linguistic features of the moves were further scrutinized in the bottom-up stage. The findings showed that all introductions conformed to the model, exemplifying the three moves: Establishing a territory, establishing a niche, and presenting the present work; regardless of the discipline. In the step level, the introductions from the hard-science disciplines exhibited the statement of research questions or hypotheses and definitional clarifications while presenting their works more than those from the soft-science disciplines. Regarding the linguistic realizations, while the tense use was more conformed, passive form was more evident in the hard science introductions. This study reaches a conclusion that discipline considerably influences the priority in conveying the information within the research article introduction along with the linguistic realizations. Recommendations for the teaching of English for research publication purposes are also presented.

Rhetorical Moves Variations of Research Article Discussion Section Published in Reputable Journals

“…Volume 11 No 3, October 2022, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 accurate research techniques, and the applicability of the findings (Setiawati, D., Nabilla, S. N., Suherdi, D., Kurniawan, E., Gunawan, W., & Lubis, 2021).…”

Macrostructural Analysis of STEM Students’ Research Introductions in the Secondary Education Context: Implications for Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Teacher Professional Development

“…While considerable research has been devoted to the structures of research introductions across different disciplines, rather less attention has been paid to the structures of research introductions written by STEM students, particularly in the secondary education context where the research introductions are not taken from students' completed theses. Past works on STEM student writing have focused on either analyzing the structure of graduate and undergraduate student research introductions (Maswana et al, 2015;Setiawati et al, 2020), exploring the structure of high school student research introductions of completed theses (Buena, 2021), or broadly examining rhetorical organization of students' assignments in a superficial manner (Pilotti & Elmoussa, 2022). Research on exploring the structure of STEM research introduction writing among secondary students remains essentially scarce.…”

“…In the field of STEM, Setiawati et al (2020) analyzed the move structure of research introduction in soft and hard sciences. The study revealed that the move structures of the examined research introductions were consistent with the CARS model regardless of the discipline.…”