Understanding the writing of thesis introductions: An exploratory study

The purpose of the study is to examine how Swales' (1990) Create-a-research-space model can be used to explain the structure of an introductory chapter of a Masters thesis in soft sciences disciplines. The most important finding is that applied linguistics and education management these seem to indicate a high student's presence and high frequency of using non-integral citation, while instructional design and technology student writers show both low authorial presence and low frequency of using non-integral citation. Implications of the research findings and practice in second language writing education will be discussed.