RHETORICAL STRUCTURE ANALYSIS ON INTRODUCTION CHAPTERS OF ENGLISH MASTER THESES BY INDONESIAN POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

This study is aimed at investigating the rhetorical structure of Introduction chapters of English master theses written by Indonesian postgraduate students and identifying the frequency of communicative moves and their constituent steps as well as finding how the students justify their research projects reported in their Introduction chapters. The research design was mixed method research combining quantitative and qualitative method. Twenty Introduction chapters of English master theses were taken from two different fields; English language education and applied linguistics, and they were analyzed using checklists. The results: (1) three moves and fifteen steps are found in the introduction chapters of master theses and three newly identified steps other than those specified in Bunton‟s are also found in the corpus of this study and (2) three moves are considered obligatory moves, seven steps are classified as obligatory, four Steps are conventional and seven Steps are optional. Further, the majority of Indonesian postgraduate students tend to rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap found in the literature. This study concludes that the move and step model suggested by Bunton (2002) and modified from Swales‟ CARS is effective enough to capture the possible rhetorical structure of introduction chapter of master thesis written by Indonesian postgraduate students.

These studies have examined how different chapters of master thesis in diverse disciplines were written using genre-based approaches.The purpose was for identifying predictable presence of rhetorical moves and steps embedded in a wide variety of text types particularly in a certain chapter of master thesis.
Although there have been a remarkable numbers of investigations applying the rhetorical structure on particular chapters of master theses, but only few studies which focused on investigating Introduction chapter (Bunton 2002, 2005, Dong 1998, Dudley-Evans 1986: 135, Hyland 2004, Kwan 2006, Loan & Pramoolsook 2014, , Shirani-Chalak 2016, Swales 2004, Wuttisrisiriporn, 2017).A study conducted by Bunton (2002) investigated the genre analysis of 45 Ph.D. thesis Introductions.It was built based on his own erlier study (Bunton, 1998) that analyzed the overall thesis structure of 21 Ph.D. and M.Phil.theses.He adopted Swales" CARS 1990 model to investigate the generic moves structure and steps of the Introduction chapters across eight disciplines.He found that all Introductions had sequences of text identifiable as the three moves in Swales"s (1990) CARS model: Establishing a Territory (T), Establishing a Niche (N), and Occupying the Niche (O) and he proposed 10 newly identified steps in the third move to introduce the present research; Defining terms, Indicating a problem or need, Method, Materials or Subjects, Product of research (Eg)/Model proposed, Chapter structure, Research questions/Hypotheses, Theoretical position, Application of product, and Evaluation of product.
One of the latest discourse analysis studies on introduction chapters was conducted by Loan & Pramoolsook (2014).They employed the modified CARS" model by Bunton (2002) to analyze the rhetorical structure of Introduction chapters of 12 master theses from the three universities in the South of Vietnam.They found that three moves; Establishing a Territory, Establish a Niche, and Occupying the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license Niche and 15 out of 24 steps described in Bunton (2002) were employed by this group of non-native English writers, although they had little or no formal instruction on how to write this genre.Last, they found one newly identified step in a separate section headed namely Chapter summary.
A study conducted by Shirani-Chalak (2016) on 40 master theses Introductions written by EFL learners from Iran found that three moves of the introduction section; (a) Establishing a territory, (b) Establishing a niche, (c) Occupying the niche were followed exactly in Iranian EFL learners" master theses with a high degree of distribution; Move 1 presents 70%, Move 2 presents for about 65% and Move 3 presests 82.5% and therefore, these three moves were categorized as an obligatory moves in Introductions of master theses.
Finally, the latest investigation on comparative rhetorical organization of ELT thesis introductions composed by Thai and American students was conducted byWuttisrisiriporn (2017), he found that both Thai and American master students followed the moves and steps proposed in the framework proposed by Bunton (2002) to construct their Introduction chapters rhetorically.The results showed that 274 move occurrences were identified in the ASI (American student Introduction) corpus and 284 move occurrences were realized in the TSI (Thai student Introduction) corpus.
All the studies above investigated master theses focusing on Introduction chapters written by Native Speaker (NS) Students and Non Native Speaker (NNS) students in which the text are written in British, American, Australian, Vietnamese and Iranian.The studies mostly found that there were similarity of the move employment used by these two groups of students.Both NS students and NNS students used all three moves stated in framework of CARS model; Establishing a Territory, Establish a Niche, and Occupying the Niche and they provided the use of various steps to accomplish each move.In spite of those similarities, the studies carried out on introductions written by Non-Native Speaker (NNS) indicated that most NNS writers are more likely to follow a similar structure of thesis Introducion.They tend to follow the instruction of thesis guidelines from their universities and also conform thesis Introduction components formed in theses available in their libraries.In contrary, the studies carried out by Native Speaker (NS) student writers which focused on comparing some various disciplines found that the way rhetorical structures of Introduction sections of master theses vary across disciplines.This is due to the reason that native speaker (NS) students may not prefer to use a rigid structure of thesis in their local community.
However, the similar studies on English master thesis written by Indonesian postgraduate students have The decision about the number of 20 thesis Introductions included in the corpus of this study is that with this size of corpus the thesis Introductions can represent the rhetorical style adopted by the authors in writing their Introduction chapters.This is also because according to Pett (1997) andSalkind (2004)  Fourth, the possible communicative units in the master theses introduction were identified by using linguistic and discourse clues and by understanding and inferring from the text.Fifth, the common discourse structure of master theses introduction was identified by employing the framework of revised CARS model suggested by Bunton (2002), then the frequency of their occurances were classified to distinguish whether moves and steps employed in the Introduction master theses were adequately qualified to be regarded as obligatory, conventional, or optional.Referring to Kanoksilapatham (2005), if the moves occured in all master thesis Introductions they were categorized as obligatory, then if they occured between 60-99% of the Master theses introduction they were categorized as conventional, but if they occured less than 60% in the master theses they were categorized as optional.

Triangulation Analysis
An independent rater involved in this study was an English teacher who has good capability in English and she is in the final semester of Magister Program at English department of education faculty of Bengkulu University.The co-rater was trained how to code the text into its possible communicative units or moves with the use of research instrument as previously explained in order to assure that the co-rater clearly understood how to code the master thesis introduction chapter.Then, the co-rater was asked to identify the possible moves in a sample of randomly selected introduction and if any miscoding act occured then a discussion, negotiation and clarification was held in order to reach an agreement between the researcher and the co-rater.Last, the co-rater worked independently to code sample texts (25% of the entire corpus) randomly selected from the 20 introductions.Inter-rater correlation analysis results showed 88,2% agreement.It shows a strong agreement (above 88%).

FINDING AND DISCUSSION
The GenericMoves found in IntroductionChapters of English Master Theses The data analysis results revealed that the generic moves found in Introduction chapters of master theses are as presented in Table 1.As can be noticed in Table 1, all Introduction chapters of master theses adopted three substantial moves proposed by Bunton (2002), namely: Move 1 (Establishing a territory), Move 2(Establishing a niche)and Move 3(Occupying the niche).The presence of these three moves in all introduction chapters have made them obligatory and confirms the finding of previous study on this definite chapter (Loan & Pramoolsook, 2014), which also showed that all three moves in Bunton"s (2002) Modified CARS model occured in their corpus.This result implies that all graduate students of both EDU and APL fields employed all these three moves to construct their thesis Introductions or to introduce general perpectives of their studies to the readers.The possible reason for this is probably in the guideline of thesis writing provided by the university these three moves are necessary required or stated to be obligatory, therefore, all graduate students have to follow this thesis instruction guidelines as well as thesis Introduction components constituted in theses submitted to the university such as section headings, subheadings, and even feedbacks from thesis supervisors.This implies that if one student does not address these three moves in his/her thesis Introduction it will be categorized incomplete.
An interpretation of the finding is that the feedbacks from thesis supervisors and examiners during the prosess of supervision or examination have a great effect on an arrangement of thesis Introduction organization.When one student writes incomplete thesis introduction chapter, his/her supervisor or examiner may have to advise him/her to complete it.It can be infer that the writers of master theses have been advised by their supervisors or examiners to include extensive information related to the topic under research by adopting these three moves in their introduction chapter in order to demonstrate their knowledge of the field and justify their claims toward topic of the research being investigated.This finding is compatible with Loan & Pramoolsook (2014), in which the twelve Introductions of Vietnamese students in TESOL had all three moves in Bunton"s (2002) Modified CARS model.They explained by the fact that these students followed the guidelines In this example, the author clearly states that there is a gap of knowledge left by previous studies in the field using contradiction connectors of "however" or 'but'.The last example is coded as a Move 3 (Occupying the niche).In example 3, the author tells explicitly what the present research is about by stating the purpose and/or the significance of the study.Clearly, the use of deictic center lexical item (this), in conjunction with the formulaic expression the purpose(the purpose of this study), is used to state the objectives pertaining to this particular study.
The feature of these three Moves in the corpus of this study is similar to the three-moves progression described by Loan & Pramoolsook (2014), where there was no move cycle occured in their Introduction corpus.This implies that all three moves follow in a single progression; the beginning move of Move 1: Establishing a territory (establishing the topic), followed by Move 2: Establishing aniche (justifying the present study), and concluded by Move 3: Occupying a niche (describing the present study).This is where the authors previewed previous research, and then pointed out gaps or problems or raised questions, and finally went on to announce their own research.
Compatible with this moves feature, Dudley-Evans (1986) remarked that the writers of thesis Introductions seemed to lead the readers from very general to specific topics in a narrative style.Therefore this made the section of the Background of the study which was accomplished by Move 1 and Move 2 in these Introductions the longest, the length of Move 1 and Move 2 in these Introductions is more than half that of the whole chapter, then it followed by Move 3 which had relatively shorter length; occurred only in approximately one or two paragraphs for each section heading.

Classification of Steps in Introduction Chapters of English Master Theses
The second analysis in this study is on identifying which steps are obligatory, conventional, and optional found in Introduction chapters of master theses.Example 4 is coded as a Step 2 (Making topic generalization and giving background information).In this step, the author uses a reference of time "Lately' and simple present tense verbs "helps', 'will' to generalize the topic of the research.The application of these two linguistic features in this move reveals that the statement being presented depicts the topic generally known or accepted statement in the field.
Example 5 is coded as a Step 1B: (Indicating a problem or need).This step is shown by the presence of some negative statements like "not comprehensible', 'not relevant', 'didn't comprehend' 'not well organized' and 'not able to'.Through these negative statements the author obviously states some problems as the main obstacles faced during the first observation.
Example 6 is coded as a Step 5 (Significance/Justification).As illustrated in the example, the author addresses the usefulness as well as significance related to the study under investigated.The phrase "The result of this research could be used' is employed by the author to state the value of the research and to make the importance of the finding explicitely.
Related to the conventional steps found in the corpus of this study, Table 2 shows that there are 4 steps realized as conventional adopted by Indonesian postgraduate students in organizing their Introduction chapters, including; Step 4 of Move 1 (Reviewing previous research), Step 1A of Move 2 (Indicating a gap in research), Step 6 (Chapter structure) and step 10 (Chapter Summary).
Step 4 of Move 1 (Reviewing previous research) was often realized in the introduction chapters of both fields EDU and APL.This is compatible with studies done by Bunton"s (2002)  The occurrence of Step 1B (Indicating a problem or need) tend to be more frequent than Step 1A (Indicating a gap in research).This reversed result revealed that EDU students seemed to avoid employing step 1A to establish their research niche but they prefered to use the other steps (i.e Step 1B).This probably because the communicative purpose of Step 1A is to illustrate a gap after reviewing some related previous studies, therefore demonstrating a new gap in their present research (Step 1A) could be a very difficult task for some graduate students.Moreover, these graduate students were in the status of a novice researcher, therefore some of them seemed to avoid employing this step but using Step 1B instead to establish their research niche.
The contrastive occurance of these two steps was compatible with the finding of Loan & Pramoolsook (2014) in which only few writers adopted step 1A in their thesis introductions; Step 1A was realized only in a small corpus.In contrast, the occurance of step 1B was more substantial that the Vietnamese students preferred realizing Step 1B in their Introductions.
Chapter summary is one of three newly realized steps other than those specified in Bunton"s (2002)  Example 7 is coded as a Step 4 (Reviewing previous research)of Move 1.In this step, the author reviews previous relevant studies by stating "Those previous researches indicated..'and then identifies the limitations of the finding/s or the inexistence of information on the same topic before using contradictory discourse markers to explain the need for the present study.The author clearly describes the function of contextualizing his/her study and demonstrating its connections to certain previous studies.
Example 8 is coded as a Step 1A (Indicating a gap in research) of Move 2. As illustrated in the example above, the author employs some linguistic features such as "very few research" and "were not investigated" to show that there is "a gap" between the previous related researches and the present research.In other words, the author implies that the research project conducted give new or different information on the same important topic, and therefore it is necessary to read.The presence of contradictive discourse markers "however" adopted by the author in Example 8 above is to convince readers that the information given before and after the marker is different or contradictory.
Example 9 is coded as a Step 6 (Chapter Structure).It is categorized as one of Conventional steps realized in Move 3. As shown in the example, in this step, the author begins his/her introduction by indicating how the chapter contents are organised.In some cases, most of the authors started their Introduction chapter by summarizing the chapter structure using some linguistics clues such as: presents,.. includes,.. covers.
Example 10 is a newly identified step in Move 3, Step 10 (Chapter Summary).As can be seen in the above example, the statement of summarizing the chapter is shown by the presence of summarizing phrase "Based on the description above'.This linguistic clue originally comes from the researcher focusing on summing up the specific information of the present research, including; the tittle, the setting, the samples, the time, the technique or method and particular skill or ability involved in the present research.In some other cases, the authors summarized their study by presenting conclusive words 'concluded', then it was followed by the appearance of Roadmap of the study.This step is oftenly found in the last paragraph at the end of introduction chapter.
Different from the conventional steps discussed above, Table 3 indicates  The other optional steps in Move 3 are (Work carried out), Step 3 (Method), and Step 4 (Materials or Subjects).These moves appeared to play an insignificant role in thesis Introductions.These steps were labelled optional since they were used to provide minor information of thesis Introductions.The realizations of Step 1 and Step 2 in the present study correspond to the work by Loan and Pramoolsook (2014).The occurances of those three steps in move 3 are in line with Loan and Pramoolsook"s (2014) finding in which Method and Materials or Subjects was also found as optional steps.These steps might not be required to be stated in thesis Introductions.However, it is possible to add one or more of these steps to support the topic being reported.
The last new optional step other than those specified in Bunton"s ( 2002 Example 11 is coded as a Step 1 (Claiming centrality).In this step, the author claims the importance or interest of the topic by employing some linguistic features including; present perfect tense (has experienced), and lexical items, adjectives or adverbs expressing "importance" or "popularity" (Lately, increasingly,important).As shown above in italics, the author clearly states "latelyhas experienced increasing challenges and pressure" to discuss the importance of the topic in the real world or by stating the current activity in that area of research.
Example 12 is coded as a Step 3 (Defining terms).As illustrated in above example, the author defines a key word"Semantic mapping is..." in order to share the common understanding of particular concepts to the readers.Similarly in some cases, some authors employ some linguistic features such as active or pasive voice of simple present verbs or tobe such as: is, are, means, defines, is defined as, to realized this step in in their introduction.
Below is the example of an optional or newly identified step in Move 2: Example 13 is coded as a newly identified step "Solution".This is an optional step in Introduction chapter of master theses.As shown in the example above, the language feature that is mostly employed by the author is "To solve this problem...'.As shown in the example above, the author proposes a particular technique, method, system and or improved models as solutions to overcome some problems faced during the observation of the research.Example 15 is coded as a Step 3 (Method).As shown in the example above, the author adopts this step by explicitly stating "was designed...mixed method research design' and employing the verb in passive formwas designed).It is possible to apply not only past tense but also present tense to describe the method discourse segment because the interpretation of the method propositions can be clearly recognized by the co-occurrence of research activity verbs and passive constructions.

The Way Indonesian Postgraduate Students Justify Their Research Projects Reported In Their English Theses On Introduction Chapters
The third question in this research as stated in the research question is how Indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their English theses on introduction chapters in terms of the steps of Move 2 (establishing a niche).Based on the data analysis result, there are two types of justification reasons for the research, the first is research based on knowledge gap and the second is research based on problems.The analysis of the result is given in Tabe 3 below.In example 16 above, the author reviewed previous relevant studies and then identified the limitations of the findings or the inexistence of information on the same topic before using contradictory discourse markers to explain the need for the present study.As illustrated in the example 16 above, the author uses not only a contradictory discourse marker 'However' but also lexical negation of "still rarely done' to introduce the rhetorical attempt of indicating a gap of information or to show an inexistent of previous relevant studies.Keraf (1992), is considered culturally impolite in Indonesia as eastern culture, especially toward those who are older and from higher social and economic status.Most of them are considering that this is not an ideal attitude especially when writing an academic text because the main purpose of academic text is to find and express the truth which involves evaluating what others have mentioned in their texts.
The current finding of this study also compatible with Swales (1990) who states that justifying a research project or activity was done by pointing at a gap found in the previous relevant studies or in current knowledge about a particular research topic.According to Swales, this is usually done by negatively evaluating or critiquing the results of previous studies in order to create a space or gap to be filled by the present research.Similar comment has been made by Hunston (1994), who says that research article writers have to consider two important reasons to conduct the research project in their introduction in order to be more convincing and persuasive.First, there should be a knowledge gap left from previous relevant studies and second, the knowledge gap occurs in an important topic.Although these two claims are equally important but they were expressed through different ways.
The existance of rhetorical work for "the gap of the research" in the niche establishment in this study was also found by Wuttisrisiriporn (2017) who claimed that the gap of the research was realised in all introductions of 30 TSI (Thai Students Introductions) corpus and considered as an obligatory step; it http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license was used as an attempt to justify the need of further research and, consequently, the pertinence of the topic under study.However, according to Wuttisrisiriporn, the absence of the rhetorical step of "counter claimming" in the corpus of his research; as also similarly found in this study; was because the authors tend to avoid giving direct criticism of weaknesses in previous research; it might not be a common practice.It seems to be a common norm that criticizing others" works by pointing at their weaknesses or defects and getting the advantages of them is considered improper in the Thai culture as well as in other cultures.Therefore, these cultures may reflect the writing habits of the authors.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
From the result and discussion of this study, it can be concluded that the generic moves found in the introduction chapters of master theses were three Obligatory moves of Bunton"s framework including: Move 1 (Establishing a territory), Move 2 (Establishing a niche)and Move 3(Occupying the niche).There are 15 out of 24 steps described by Bunton (2002) and 3 newly identified steps were found in the corpus of this study.7 steps are Obligatory, 4 Steps are Conventional and 7 Steps are Optional.In terms of the way how Indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their introduction chapters, it can be concluded that majority of Indonesian postgraduate students rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap.They frequently used this step, instead of the others, to convince readers that the findings of previous relevant studies have some kinds of limitation and therefore their present study is necessary to conduct.
Since this research was conducted on a small corpus of Indonesian master theses, it is necessary for further studies to include bigger corpus and conduct the research on other chapters of master theses in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of how this academic genre is written by this group of non-native English speaking writers in Indonesia.
journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license Tabel 1.The Generic Moves found in that there are 7 steps categorized as Optional found in the corpus of this study, including; Step 1 of Move 1 (Claiming centrality), Step 3 of Move 1 (Defining 156-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license terms), Step 2 of Move 3 (Work carried out), Step 3 of Move (Method), Step 4 of Move 3 (Materials or Subjects),andtwo newly identified steps Solution and Roadmap of the Research.In this corpus, Step 1 (Claiming centrality) was categorized as an optional step.The writers used this step to claim that their current studies are quite useful or relevant to the field of research interest.But apparently, it seems that Indonesian graduate students from English Education field neglected to employ Step 1 (Claiming Centrality) in their thesis introductions.The adoption of Step 1 in this current research corresponds to the finding of Wuttisrisiriporn (2017) where the step 1 (Claiming centrality) was observed as an optional step as it not significantly occurred in the ASI corpus and TSI corpus.It was also in line with the work of Loan & Pramoolsook"s (2014) in which none out of 12 Introductions of Vietnamese TESOL master"s students employed Step 1 (Claiming Centrality) in composing their Introductions.Most students rarely used references to support their claim in the first paragraph of introduction and therefore most Introductions are started with a very general or unrelated statement (Arsyad & Arono, 2016) Similarly, Step 3 of Move 1 (Defining terms)seemed to be neglected by students from both EDU and APL fields.It was compatible with several studies e.g.Bunton (2002); Loan & Pramoolsook (2014) in which Step 3 was failed to show up in their corpus.This is probably because the students of both fields tend to define specific keyterms in Move 3 in a separate section heading entitled Definitions of Key Terms and the defined terms were often clearly enumerated in a paragraph of text.
) is Roadmap of the Research.It is a chart of reviewing related previous studies to describe the field of their research in which they relate the previous studies conducted to that of the present study.It shows that the research of present study was quite differ from the previous research and it was oftenly adopted to strengthen the use of Step 4 of Move 1 (Reviewing previous research) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license andthe Step 2 of Move 2 (Indicating a gap in research).The Roadmap of the Research was enclosed at the end of the background section after chapter summary.Finally, since the corpus of this study belong to English language education and applied linguistics disciplines, some steps in Bunton"s model such as Materials, Product of research/Model proposed, Application of product, and Evaluation of product which are in the science and engineering theses were not found in this corpus.Below are some examples of Optional Steps realized in Move 1 taken from the corpus of this study: It is also interesting enough to investigate rhetorical structure of graduate master theses across disciplines as disciplinary variations exist in each specific genre.Since the finding of this study explained the majority of Indonesian graduate students in justifying their research projects by indicating a gap or limitation, inconsistencies or nonexistence of previous relevant studies and none of them critically analyze the finding of related previous studies or employing Step 1D (Counter claiming), Indonesian writers must modify their introduction rhetorical styles especially in justifying the research by addressing Step 1D (Counter claiming) or pointing at the weaknesses or defects of previous relevant studies.The findings of this study also have drawn significant implications for EFL 162-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee| DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license lecturers as thesis supervisors and learners.Due to the fact that most master students have been facing difficulty in writing their graduate research, the lecturers are hopefully able to recommend a good rhetorical arrangement of moves and steps to their students in order to successfully compose their master thesis Introduction chapters.Therefore, this study is expected to trigger the students" awareness as well as to give examples of how to compose a better Introduction chapter and how to efectively construct their theses for publication.

Table 3 .
The Distribution of Justification Reasons for the Research