Abstract
This study was conducted to investigate the difficulties encountered by undergraduate ESL students in writing the introduction section of their project reports. Five introduction sections of bachelor of arts students, majoring in English language, were analyzed and a lecturer was interviewed regarding the areas of the students’ weaknesses. Swales’ create-a-research-space (cars) model was used as the analytical framework of the study. The results revealed that students confronted problems in writing their introduction for each move especially for move 2, which consists of counter claiming, indicating research gap, raising questions from previous research and continuing tradition. It was also found that the students had difficulty in writing the background of the study, theoretical framework, and statement of the problem which indicated their unawareness of the appropriate rhetorical structure of the introduction section.
Highlights
Writing academic research papers is expected to be structured in a manner that is defined by particular norms, standards, conventions and rhetorical moves that make it different from writing for other purposes (Cargill & O’Connor, 2009)
The main objective of this study is to identify the difficulties faced by undergraduate ESL students when writing the Introduction section of their project reports based on Swale’s 3 move-structure of CARS model
This study addresses the following research questions: What are the difficulties faced by undergraduate ESL students when it comes to writing the Introduction section of a project report?
Summary
Writing academic research papers is expected to be structured in a manner that is defined by particular norms, standards, conventions and rhetorical moves that make it different from writing for other purposes (Cargill & O’Connor, 2009). A rhetorical move refers to each specific section of a text that performs a particular communicative function (Swales, 1990). The structure of the undergraduate project report consists of an abstract and five sections which are Introduction, Literature review, Method, Results and discussion, and Conclusion. The role of the Introduction in general is to convey the topic or argument that authors highlight in their manuscripts. It functions as an opening, and captures the reader’s attention while introducing the significance of the study (Cheung, 2012; Hashim, 2005; Samraj, 2002 & 2005; Stapa, Tengku Mohd Maasum, & Abd Aziz, 2014)
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