a comparative move analysis of the introduction sections of ma theses by iranian and native post-graduate students

since esp received universal attention to smooth the path for academic studies and productions, a great deal of research and studies have been directed towards this area. swales’ (1990) model of ra introduction move analysis has served a pioneering role of guiding many relevant studies and has proven to be productive in terms of helpful guidelines that are the outcome of voluminous productions in the field of genre analysis. in this work i have made an attempt to generalize the model to theses’ introductions of master of arts in applied linguistics from the two camps comprising iranian ma theses candidates and their counterparts of english natives or native-likes. the analysis reveals how much the model can be generalized to the case of ma theses and to what degree the moves from each camp can correspond synchronously to move structure of each other. the pedagogical implications of this study may serve a facilitative role in the work of many groups such as syllabus designers or in preparing the ma candidates for their four-credit course of “thesis writing since esp received universal attention to smooth the path for academic studies and productions, a great deal of research and studies have been directed towards this are.