With a view to assisting international students' comprehension and production of academic papers in various disciplines, this study analyzed the appearances of three moves recognized as being "typical of introduction" in a total of two hundred and seventy Japanese papers in representative academic journals in natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The three typically introductory moves, i.e., a) description of the research object and background, b) discussion of previous studies and c) statement of the purpose and outline of the study, were actually observed to appear in the pattern "a→b→c" across many different disciplines, while some features were specific to a field or to a certain journal. Also, another pattern was recognized where the move c) recurs in sections following the initial sections. Some proposals of the pedagogical nature were made based on the results.
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