Introductions in engineering lectures

There have been many move analyses of research article introductions, including several that have drawn on academic corpora, starting with (and heavily influenced by) the work of Swales (1981, 1990, 2004). The conventions for structuring research articles are relatively stable and are well-understood by members of the relevant research communities; research article introductions are almost always demarcated by section headings, for example, and typically consist of a series of moves aiming to create a ‘research space’ for the article to occupy. In many other academic genres, however, there is greater variation in the purpose and structure of introductory sections. Even if they all function to ‘introduce the academic work’ (Bhatia 1997: 182), practitioners do not necessarily agree about their generic features. Nesi and Gardner (2012: 98) found considerable variation in the role of introductions in student essays, for example, and Bhatia’s informants disagreed about the distinctions between introductions, prefaces and forewords to academic books (1997: 183).