Move-Step Structure of the Introduction Section of English Medical Science Research Articles Written by Chinese Researchers Published in International Journals
In the past decades, a number of researchers have tried hard to identify the move-step structure of different sections in research articles (RAs) from various disciplines. However, there is a very few amount of previous studies conducted on the move-step structure of the Introduction section of English medical science research articles (MSRAs) written by Chinese researchers published in international journals. In order to fill this gap, the present study aims to identify the moves, steps, and their structure of the Introduction section of English MSRAs written by Chinese researchers at Zunyi Medical University (ZMU) published in international journals. To create the target corpus of the present study, 30 Introductions were purposively selected from 25 international medical science journals, which were published from 2007 to 2015. It is worth noting that all the authors are restricted to Chinese researchers only and at least one author must come from ZMU. The framework of Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) was adopted for the move-step analysis in the present study. The results demonstrated that these Introduction sections were generally written with three moves following the selected framework. In addition, there were two new steps that occurred in the Introduction section of these English MSRAs. In conclusion, the findings of the present study might provide a guideline for the research who plan to write English MSRAs for international articles more effectively. Moreover, the findings may provide valuable information for academic writing textbook designers as well.