An analysis of the functional moves in the introduction sections of research articles written by Turkish scholars

English is the main medium of communication among academic researchers. Publishing in international journals may become very challenging for non-native speakers who may have different conventions of writing research articles. In the existing literature, research articles (RAs) written in English and in other languages have been examined in order to explore whether the textual organization in various languages is similar or different. However, intercultural studies of texts produced by L2 writers in English are few in number - in particular studies focusing on the introduction section which is known to be troublesome for novice writers (Ahmed, 2004; Jogthong, 2001). Moreover, while abstracts in academic writing have received attention recently, much less research has investigated introduction sections and there has been little descriptive investigation of their move structure, including interdisciplinary variation. Introduction sections of RAs are of great importance because in these sections writers create rhetorical patterns in each language to claim knowledge. Due to lack of enough research in the introduction sections of RAs, this study aimed to examine research article introductions (RAIs) written in English and Turkish by Turkish speakers across two disciplines- Preschool Education and Special Education, using Swales' (2004) CARS Model to focus on the move and step structures. The analyses of the data indicated the existence of both similarities and also differences. The findings demonstrated that both native and non-native writers are well aware of the functional moves of the introduction sections of the research article proposed by Swales (2004). The results demonstrated that although less than half of the RAIs followed the move sequence of 1-2-3 in both of the disciplines, regardless of the sequence, all of the moves were existent to a high degree in the RAIs. A couple of implications were drawn from the study and some suggestions were made regarding teaching second language writing in general and also teaching English academic writing for Turkish advanced learners and Turkish scholars. Key words: Research Articles, Introduction Sections, Contrastive Rhetorics, CARS Model, Teaching Academic Writing.