A Genre – Based Analysis of Academic Exercise Introductions in the BEd. TESL Programme, UiTM, Malaysia

This paper utilized a content document analysis method to investigate the use of rhetorical moves in the introductions in academic exercises written by BEd TESL students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. It described how genre analysis was used to analyze the academic exercise introductions of a corpus composed of 30 texts written in English by Malaysian writers. The analysis revealed that the rhetorical patterns and some moves proposed by Swales in his Open a Research Option model were found in introductions even though they were not in order of sequence. The objectives of this analysis were to verify whether the rhetorical patterns of organization and the moves found in introductions coincided with those proposed by Swales (1993) in his study of research article introductions. Besides analyzing the CARS model by Swales (1993), this study also identified the alternative model of Open a Research Option (OARO) in the introductions. The findings showed that Malaysian writers did not like to comment on others’ work. To conclude the introduction section of their writing, Malaysian writers preferred referring to the consequences of their research. In general, the rhetorical moves and steps employed in academic exercise introduction sections were more reflective of OARO than CARS.