The purpose of the introduction is to show your reader what you are doing in your writing. It is also helpful to explain why you are doing it and how you are doing it.
For that reason, there are usually three main parts in the introduction. The most useful description is given by Swales (1990, pp. 137-165):
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1. Establish a research territory show that the general research area is important, central, interesting, problematic, or relevant in some way. introduce and review items of previous research in the area. |
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2. Establishing a niche indicate a gap in the previous research by raising a question about it, or extending previous knowledge in some way. |
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3. Occupying the niche outline purposes or stating the nature of the present research. indicate the structure of the RP. |
Identify the moves in the following introduction:
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Use Of A Writing Web-Site By Pre-Masters Students On An English for Academic Purposes Course. A. J. Gillett, University of Hertfordshire Introduction 1During the past 10 years, the availability of computers in educational institutions has increased dramatically (James, 1999). 2Progress in computer development has been made to the point that powerful, inexpensive computers with large capacities are available in many classrooms and libraries for student use. 3Many students also have purchased and are purchasing computers for their own use at home. 4Most studies seem to agree that the microcomputer will continue to hold an important role in education in the future. 5For example, James (1999) and Smith (2000) suggest large increases in the numbers of computers both in educational institutions and the home in the near future. 6As far as education is concerned, Shaw (2001) identified three main uses of computers: the object of a course, an administrative tool, and a means of providing instruction. 7Fish and Cheam (2002) cite four uses of computers as a means of providing instruction: exercise, tutorial, simulation and problem solving. 8A wide range of computer programmes are now therefore available in all these areas for individual and classroom use. 9However, even though many studies have reported an increased use of computers in education, there has been very little research reported on the effectiveness of such use. 10The purpose of the present study is therefore to ascertain the effectiveness of using computer-assisted instruction as compared to traditional classroom instruction in an EAP writing class. |
Identify the information elements you find in each sentence of the text.
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| Sentence 1 |
| Sentence 2 |
| Sentence 3 |
| Sentence 4 |
| Sentence 5 |
| Sentence 6 |
| Sentence 7 |
| Sentence 8 |
| Sentence 9 |
| Sentence 10 |
Note particularly the language used in the first two sentences to express Move la.
In many ways, Move 2 is the key move in Introductions. It connects Move 1 (what has been done) to Move 3 (what the present research will do). Move 2 thus establishes the reason for the study. By the end of Move 2, the reader should have a good idea of what is going to come in Move 3.
Move 2s establish a niche by indicating a gap. Probably the most common way to indicate a gap is to use a "negative" subject. Presumably, negative subjects are chosen because they signal immediately to the reader that Move 1 has come to an end. Note the following uses of little and few:
Of course, not all RP Introductions express Move 2 by indicating an obvious gap. You may prefer, for various reasons, to avoid negative comment altogether. In such cases, a useful alternative is to use a contrastive statement.
Move 3: Occupying the Niche
The third and final step is to show you want to fill the gap (or answer the question) that has been created in Move 2.
Identify the moves in the following introductions:
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THE THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY AND SPECIFIC HEAT OF EPOXY RESIN FROM 0.1 TO 8.0K. The thermal properties of glassy materials at low temperatures are still not completely understood. The thermal conductivity has a plateau which is usually in the range 5 to 10K and below this temperature it has a temperature dependence which varies approximately as T. The specific heat below 4K is much larger than that which would be expected from the Debye theory and it often has an additional term which is proportional to T. Some progress has been made towards understanding the thermal behaviour by assuming that there is a cut-off in the photon spectrum at high frequencies (Zaitlin and Anderson, 1975a, b) and that there is an additional system of low-lying two-level states (Anderson et al., 1972; Phillips, 1972). Nevertheless more experimental data are required and in particular it would seem desirable to make experiments on glassy samples whose properties can be varied slightly from one to the other. The present investigation reports attempts to do this by using various samples of the same epoxy resin which have been subjected to different curing cycles. Measurements of the specific heat (or the diffusing) and the thermal conductivity have been taken in the temperature range 0.1 to 80K for a set of specimens which covered up to nine different curing cycles. (Kelham and Rosenburg, 1981) |
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An elaborate system of marking social distance and respect is
found in the morphology of Nahuatl as spoken in communities of the Malinche
volcano area in the Mexican states of Tlaxcala and Puebla. The complexity of
the morphology involved, the semantic range of the elements, and the variation
in the system in use raise questions of considerable interest for our
understanding of the form and function of such systems, both in Nahuatl itself
and in other languages. |
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In recent years applied researchers have become increasingly interested in the interpersonal relationships with manager-subordinate dyads. The majority of studies have focused on actual similarity between managers and their subordinates as related to managers' appraisals of subordinates' performance (Miles, 1964; Nieva, 1976; Rude, 1970; Senger, 1971), subordinates' job satisfaction (Huber, 1970) and subordinates' evaluations of their managers. (Weiss, 1977). A few studies have examined the extent to which subordinates congruently perceive their managers (referred to here as "subordinate's perceptual congruence"). These studies suggest that subordinates who are more perceptually aware of their superiors' work-related attitudes receive higher performance evaluations (Golmieh, 1974; Green, 1972; Labovitz, 1972) and are more satisfied with their superiors (Howard, 1968). Each of these previous studies has researched only a part of this complex dyadic interpersonal relationship. First, none of the studies has examined the effects of a manager's congruent perception of a subordinate's work-related attitudes (i.e., "manager's perceptual congruence"). Second, no studies can be found that directly compare the relative importance of actual similarity with that of perceptual congruence. Third, none of the previous studies has looked at interpersonal perception by the manager and by the subordinates simultaneously within the same dyad. The purpose of the present field investigation was to study both actual similarity and perceptual congruence and to examine them from the perspective of both the manager and the subordinate. The study investigated the relationships of these perceptual processes in two important organizational outcomes: subordinates' satisfaction with work and supervision, and managers' evaluations of subordinates' job performance. Specifically, the study examined: (a) the relative magnitude of perceptual congruence and actual similarity with these two organizational outcomes; (b) whether the more congruently a subordinate perceives the manager (subordinate's perceptual congruence), the more satisfied the subordinate will be; and (c) whether the more congruently a manager perceives the subordinate (manager's perceptual congruence), the higher the subordinate's performance will be evaluated. |
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.