The Rhetorical Structure of Introduction Sections in Egyptian and International Research Articles in Dentistry

The current paper aims at investigating the generic structure of the introduction sections of research articles (RAs) written by Egyptian and international researchers in the field of dentistry. To this end, a sample of 50 RA introduction sections were selected from Egyptian and international journals between 2014 and 2021. The study adapted Create a Research Space (CARS) model suggested by Swales' (2004) in combination with Sheldon's (2011) eight sub-steps of Move1. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were deployed to analyze the selected data. Findings showed similarities and differences between the two groups where Move1 was found to be the most frequent move within the two datasets. However, this move was the only obligatory one in the Egyptian corpus, whereas the three moves were classified as obligatory in the international subset. The present paper contributes to pedagogy helping Egyptian and novice researchers to write more effective RA introduction sections. It also contributes to a better comprehension of the rhetorical move structure of the introduction section through employing an integrated approach of both Swales' (2004) and Sheldon's (2011). In addition, using large corpora makes the findings of the study more reliable.