Now that you have learned about the structural components of informative and descriptive abstracts as well as their language features, can you design a chart illustrating the stages of composing an abstract? Or can you try designing a checklist for an academic abstract?
Activity 3-1: Writing procedures
In order to make sure that the abstract stands alone and can be understood separately from the thesis itself. You may try the following stages.
1. Review the components of an abstract
One to two sentences for:
Reasons for doing the research
Topic and research question
Methods
Results/findings
Conclusions/recommendations
2. Writing procedures
For an informative abstract:
Finish your paper
Read over your paper and identify the key points for each section
Connect the ideas with appropriate transitions
Add and remove text as needed
Revise, edit and proofread
For a conference abstract:
Usually written before the results are in or the paper is finished
Less formal than journal abstracts
Be as succinct as possible
3. Peer evaluation and self evaluation
Activity 3-2: Checklist for polishing an academic abstract
1. Design a checklist for an academic abstract with your partners and use the following one for reference.
Checklist for Academic Abstracts
Content
Seamlessly blend the elements of the associated text into one coherent paragraph
Include only relevant information
Use a clear and concise writing style
Topic/Purpose
Make thesis/hypothesis/objectives stand out
Avoid repeating information from the title
If possible, avoid references
Introduce specific terminology (e.g. definitions, scientific and chemical names)
Methods
Mention novel techniques
Be specific
e.g. “20 and 40 kg/acre of nitrogen” rather than “two treatments of nitrogen”
Results
If many results, only present the most important
Be specific
e.g. “...increased by 50%” rather than “...increased”.
Conclusions
Just the major implications
Relate back to your purpose and research question
Writing Style
Clear and concise
Remove or shorten any unnecessary words or phrases
Avoid abbreviations, acronyms
If necessary, define unfamiliar terms, introduce acronyms, e.g. rapid eye movement (REM).
2. Mediocre abstracts: mediocre abstracts read like a table of contents in sentence form. Study the following example of a mediocre abstract and try to improve it.
Example:
The behavior of editors is discussed. What should be covered by an abstract is considered. The importance of the abstract is described. Dictionary definitions of “abstract”are quoted. At the conclusion a revised abstract is presented.
What You should Know
There are mainly two kinds of abstracts: informative abstracts and descriptive abstracts.
Informative abstracts, one common kind of abstracts in academic writings, are usually accomplished after the whole academic paper is done. They are the indispensible part of graduation papers of university students and the published articles in academic journals.
The majority of abstracts are informative. While they still do not critique or evaluate a work, they do more than describe it. A good informative abstract acts as a surrogate for the work itself. That is, the writer presents and explains all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the complete article/paper/book. An informative abstract includes not only the information like the purpose, methods, scope of the complete paper, but also the results and conclusions of the research and the recommendations of the author. The length varies according to discipline, but an informative abstract is rarely more than 10% of the length of the entire work. In the case of a longer work, it may be much less.
Descriptive abstracts are commonly written for academic conferences. Conferences usually involve the presentation of new and in-progress research. Additionally, many conferences require abstracts months before the actual presentation. As such, abstracts for conferences are often written before the research is complete. The atmosphere at most academic conferences is generally less formal than that in the academic publishing industry, and this relaxed atmosphere can leech into your abstracts, but it is important to maintain most of the conventions of professional communication. Conference abstracts should adhere to the format guidelines set out by the organizers.
A descriptive abstract indicates the type of information found in the work. It makes no judgments about the work, nor does it necessarily provide results or conclusions of the research. It does incorporate key words found in the text and may include the purpose, methods, and scope of the research. Essentially, the descriptive abstract describes the work being abstracted. Some people consider it an outline of the work, rather than a summary. Descriptive abstracts are usually very short—100 words or less.
Abstracts are often one-page (or less) summaries of academic papers or lectures, meant to give readers a quick idea about what those papers or lectures are about. For academic conferences, abstracts allow organizers to select and schedule presenters.But conference abstracts differ from abstracts written for theses or dissertations. Whereas the latter are formal and often quite technical, academics are allowed much more freedom when drafting abstracts for conferences. Language Focus
The Language of Abstracts
A brief introduction of the topic/reason of doing the research
After World War II… However, today… This is mostly…
Over the past decade … have led to…
Research objectives/problem statement/ research question
This dissertation examines/studies /focuses on...
The goal is to…
Research methods/procedure
Participant-observation, videotape data and video stimulated recall interviews provide insights into …
Important results/key findings
Evaluations show that … resulted in high levels of student satisfaction, in performance improvements in final exams when compared with previous years and in workload efficiency gains brought about by the application of technology.
Conclusions/recommendations
This research highlights the importance of …
Assignment
1.Write an abstract for one of the essays/papers assigned to you by your English teachers. Make sure you invite enough peer editors to do peer evaluation for you.
2.Write an abstract for the academic paper assigned to you by your teacher.
3.Choose one academic paper from our university English database and write an abstract for it. Submit both the abstract and the original English paper to your teacher.