Abstract A large proportion of all graduates study engineering disciplines, and the number of master theses completed far outstrips that of doctoral-level works. However, engineering disciplines in general and their master theses in particular have received comparatively little attention from applied linguistics, leaving writing instructors with sparse guidance when preparing courses for MSc students in engineering. Here, we present the results of a corpus analysis of introduction sections in 57 master theses in mechanical engineering and a genre analysis of 16 of their introductions. A concordance analysis of the most frequent keywords revealed the typical discourse functions employed by students when writing about their research in this section. The genre analysis confirmed the presence of most of the elements of Swales's CARS schema in MSc theses. These findings contribute to knowledge of this understudied field in applied linguistics and can be used to design materials and courses for MSc engineering students focussing on vocabulary, rhetorical structures, and academic socialisation.

中文翻译：

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向工程师教授硕士论文写作：来自语料库的见解和介绍的体裁分析

摘要 大部分毕业生攻读工程学科，完成的硕士论文数量远远超过博士水平。然而，一般的工程学科，特别是他们的硕士论文，很少受到应用语言学的关注，在为工程硕士生准备课程时，写作教师的指导很少。在这里，我们展示了对 57 篇机械工程硕士论文的引言部分的语料库分析结果，以及对其 16 篇引言的体裁分析。对最常用关键词的一致性分析揭示了学生在撰写本节研究时使用的典型话语功能。体裁分析证实了 Swales 的大部分元素的存在 ■ 硕士论文中的CARS 模式。这些发现有助于了解应用语言学中这个尚未研究的领域，并可用于为硕士工程专业的学生设计材料和课程，重点是词汇、修辞结构和学术社会化。