Perspectives on the Introductory Phase of Empirical Research Articles

（Kathy） Ling Lin is a lecturer at the Research Centre for Corpora and Intercultural Studies, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She received her Ph.D. from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and worked at the Centre for Corpus Research, Birmingham University for her postdoctoral research. Her primary research focus is on grammar, genre and discourse in academic and professional contexts, using corpus and genre approaches. Her publications have appeared in English for Specific Purposes, the Asian ESP Journal, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and Iberica, among others. She received the Richard Pemberton Award from the Hong Kong Association of Applied Linguistics. Currently, she is the principal investigator for several projects on academic discourse, respectively supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Project no.: 18CYY054), the Philosophy and Social Science Planning Program of Shanghai (Project no.: 2017EYY007), and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation (Project no.: 15CG10).

• Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Genre Structure and Citation.- Chapter 3 Research Design and Methods.- Chapter 4 Lead-in Study 1: The Macro-Structure of Contemporary Eras.- Chapter 5 Lead-in Study 2: The Era Macro-Structural Development in Civil Engineering(CE) and Applied Linguistics (AL).- Chapter 6 Rhetorical Structure of the Introductory Part.- Chapter 7 Citation Use in the Introductory Part.- Chapter 8 Conclusion.