The Introduction Section of Conference Proceedings PapersWritten by Vietnamese Researchers in Computer Engineering and Communication Engineering: A Genre Analysis

• Main Authors: Pham Thi Ca Dao, 范可雅
• Other Authors: Yu-Ying Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5dz92w

碩士 === 元智大學 === 應用外語學系 === 101 === The part genre of introductions has long been an interest of text analysts in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Most of the past studies, however, put emphasis on research article introductions (RAIs), while few have analyzed another important genre – conference proceedings paper introductions (CPPIs). The present study thus aims to examine CPPIs, particularly focusing on the introduction texts written by Vietnamese researchers across two fields – Computer Engineering and Communication Engineering. In order to better show the characteristics of Vietnamese researchers’ academic writing, USA-based researchers’ writing in the same fields was used as comparison baseline throughout this study. The data used in this study were 80 CPPIs collected from conference proceedings published between 2005 and 2012 in the English language by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) – 40 written by the Vietnamese researchers and 40 by the USA-based researchers. These data were analyzed based on a modified version of Swales’ (2004) Create a Research Space (CARS) model. The findings of this study reveal three phenomena. First, while the USA-based researchers in the two fields used the structure M1-M2-M3 the most often to present a direct writing style, more elaborated styles M1-M2-M1-M3 and (M1-M2)n-M3 were employed by the Vietnamese researchers in Communication Engineering and in Computer Engineering, respectively. The result could be a reflection of the direct and explicit writing styles of authors working in the USA and the more elaborated writing style of Vietnamese researchers. Second, it was also found that the Vietnamese authors concern more about establishing a territory for their researches (i.e., move 1) whereas the USA-based researchers put more emphasis on providing justifications to conduct their study (i.e., move 2) and information about the being-reported researches (i.e., move 3). Third, although the two groups of Vietnamese researchers in Computer Engineering and Communication Engineering seem to be similar in the use of the three main moves 1, 2 and 3 in Swales’ (2004) CARS model, differences can still be found in the use of constituent steps of these moves. As compared to the Vietnamese CPP introductions in Computer Engineering, the Communication Engineering CPP introductions rarely provided critical evaluations on previous works of others. Instead, positive justifications for the research topics were usually made in terms of the need to solve “real world” problems and “add to what is known” or in terms of the expected benefits of their own research. This finding could be related to the fact that compared with the other three groups, Vietnamese Communication Engineering researchers have more difficulties in accessing to the resource of other researchers’ works in Vietnam. The results gained in this study can provide better understanding of CPPIs written by researchers in the two fields investigated and hopefully help Vietnamese writers to know better the norms of the international community.