1.4　This Study

This research examines the genre practices of master students in three local disciplinary communities,including the Applied Linguistics communities in China,New Zealand and America.The Applied Linguistics community in China is referred to as a uniform community in the sense that it is composed only of local(Chinese)students.The New Zealand and American communities are referred to as mixed communities in that they are made up of both local and international students.It aims to identify the differences in genre practices among the three communities and to explore reasons in local disciplinary cultures underlying the differences,with the hope that the findings may help students and academics in their intercultural learning,teaching and researching activities.

In order to investigate genre differences at the community and the individual level,90 opening sections of Master’s Theses were collected from the three local disciplinary communities.Study 1 explores the form and content knowledge of the opening section of master’s thesis,laying the foundation for further investigation of intercultural differences.The investigations of genre variation at the community level and individual level are reported in Study 2 and 3 respectively.