MOVE STRUCTURE OF INTRODUCTIONS IN THE FINAL REPORTS WRITTEN BY THE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT SRIWIJAYA STATE POLYTECHNIC

Abstract

The objectives of the study are to identify rhetorical functions in the Introduction Chapter of
Final Report and to examine whether rhetorical functions utilized by the students of English
Department at Sriwijaya State Polytechnic have or have not fulfilled the rhetorical structure proposed in
Swales‟ move model. The corpus was collected through purposive random sampling from a number of
final reports written by the students. The study used Swales‟ move model in analyzing the corpus. The
results indicate that, despite similarities with Swales‟ move model, there are some differences between
the students‟ introductions and the model. It is assumed that the different features of the rhetorical
structures are influenced by specific characteristics of the polytechnic final reports and their academic
writing capacity. Most of the introductions have not met the criteria or principles as suggested in
Swales‟ move. This study shows that there is a need to teach the principles of scientific writing to the
students and increase their awareness of rhetorical structure of academic genre. The study has shown
that Swales‟ model is useful framework in analyzing students‟ final report introductions, but other
studies are necessary to compare and reveal their specific characteristics in different disciplines.