Preaching to Cannibals: A Look at Academic Writing in the Field of Engineering.

This study applied the Create a Research Space (CARS) model, a discourse model for research-based technical writing, to the introductory sections of 12 award-winning articles in the field of software engineering published in a major professional journal. The model analyzes the "move" structure of the writing. In the initial analysis of the articles, it became clear that the model's terminology needed clarification and the model required some modification for this purpose. Results suggest the model was generally successful in describing the overall framework of the introductions, but that problems emerged when a more detailed description of software engineering introductions is needed. The model was hampered by weak definitions of individual "steps," some of which are redundant or used infrequently. A more serious problem is the absence of an "evaluation of research" step in the original model, which is found to be crucial in the introduction. Implications for classroom use of the model to teach English for special purposes are discussed. Contains 19 references. (MSE)