The Rhetorical Moves in The Thesis Background of English Language Education Department Students at UIN Sunan Ampel.

This research aims to analyze the rhetorical patterns used by English Language Department Students (ELED) at UIN Sunan Ampel in their thesis backgrounds. In this research, qualitative descriptive is used as the research design. The data of this study were collected from ELED students’ thesis published in Digilib. There are nine students’ thesis background taken and analyzed using the CARS model developed by Swales. The results revealed that the majority of research background in students’ thesis follow Swales CARS model while some other thesis backgrounds tended to skip certain steps: 1-3 (reviewing the previous studies) and 3-2 (announcing present research). In move 2, the majority of thesis background do not use 4 steps but only one or two steps. This indicates that the research background of students thesis confirm the general pattern of research background in the discourse of research paper.