A Move Analysis of Dissertation Introductions Written by Native English Speakers and Indonesian PhD Students across Disciplines

Dissertation introductions (DIs) have received on-going attention because they are considered to be the most challenging and difficult part of an academic text for graduate students, particularly for non-native English speakers (NNES). However, research that has investigated DIs written by native English speakers (NES) and by NNES, particularly Indonesian (IND) PhD students across various disciplines, is lacking. This paper presents an analysis of moves in the introductory section of 200 dissertations written by NES and IND PhD students in terms of move organization based on Bunton’s (2002) adaptation of the CARS framework. The corpus consisted of 200 DIs from the disciplines of physics, linguistics, engineering, and education that were published online on the ProQuest Dissertation and Theses Database. The findings revealed that both NES and IND PhD students followed the moves and steps presented in the framework to create their introduction sections. However, it was also found that only 13 DIs (7%) followed Bunton’s CARS in this research, but most of them were not constructed in the way assumed in CARS because a number of move reversals and recursives were found. There were both similarities and differences between NNES and NES writers in the introduction sections with regard to the frequency of move-step occurrences, move-step classifications, patterns, and new steps. Similar findings between the NNES and NES writers appeal for the need to make teachers and L2 learners as well as L1 Ph.D. writers aware of methods for writing precise and concise DIs