Recent academic and professional writing regularly requires from authors to write competent abstracts. The paper deals with theoretical norms and practical outlines about mentioned writing skill. Many text books and studies have been already devoted to that topic, so author of the paper compiled basic hints which are understandable and useable in English for academic purposes teaching or in practice. Besides theoretical background and definitions, practical patterns are the main asset of the paper. The paper will help students and university teachers who are concerned in writing in English and to meet the demands they will face in college, university, as well as on the job.
Looking through academic and professional abstracts, a reader can evaluate its value and function. The quality is connected to norms, standards and keeping rules. The comparison of various abstracts from various countries stimulates to work out basic recommendations and ideas how to write it. To form universal advice and disseminate it to scholars, university students and scientists is a positive matter of globalisation and world information exchange. The sophisticated abstract is a «lighthouse» in the world with overcrowded and saturated information systems. The aim if this article is the summarise problems related to abstract writing.
1 Two types of abstracts
Basically, authors distinguish to types of abstracts: descriptive and informative.
Descriptive (called also indicative) abstract merely identifies the areas to be covered in the article or report. It is an extended statement of purpose or scope. Such an abstract is only useful for a very long report, because it demonstrates only the paper's organization, not its content. The informative abstract summarizes the entire report and gives the reader an overview of the facts that will be laid out in detail in the paper itself. It is rarely longer than one page and should never exceed more than 10 % of the length of the entire report; otherwise it defeats its own purpose [1].
Each abstract should answer Robert Brown's eight questions which he asked authors.
- Who are the intended readers?
- What did you do?
- Why did you do it?
- What happened?)
- What do the results mean in theory?
- What do the results mean in practice?
- What is the key benefit for your readers?
- What remains unresolved?
2 Abstract Puzzle Scheme
Mostly, authors are not native English speakers and write down abstract requires a lot of time to find out appropriate expressions. The authors are recommended to elaborate the «abstract puzzle» of their own.
a) Purpose/ Problem/ Scope:
Recent................requires..............to
Taking a broad-based view of.....this paper examines the feasibility of
Presented paper (thesis) deals with the English for Specific purposes within the process of vocational training and recruitment as it is reflected in teaching in EU. Problem of.... .
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the......of........
The aim of this thesis is to contribute to methods of supporting....
In particular, authors focus on the problem of building, designing, .... .
The research falls into this.... area.
A method for.... based on ....is described utilization The role of.... is discussed and its utilization in the.... is highlighted.
The problem of.... is also of great interest of the thesis.
Requirements for.... are stated and the.... is designed. This.... work is the contribution to the...
b) Methods and sources
Primary and secondary research sources were studied and careful consideration was given to the following criteria: ........
Many studies have already been devoted to the.... and it may be lay down/ lay down(s rule), (principle) procedure
Such papers initiate from.... . …/emanate from, originate from, arise, The authors show a.... by which it is possible to.....
c) Description:
Our approach is based on an assumption that... . A model of ... is proposed first.
... are represented by .... (graph).
This led us to devising an algorithm which uses.....
A new system has been devised to control traffic in the city.
Finally we present our proposal of a technique... which allows to.... . The.... allows the use of a number of different .... approaches for ... . The proposed ... was implemented on ...., but it is easily portable to ... . Experimental.... results from..... proved the efficiency of the ... .
The.... is built during the .... time phase.
Different.... mechanisms may be chosen for.... of.... .
The toolset was built as a framework for solving different..... . After having identified the.... of the.... , a.... for.... is presented. Several aspects of.... are discussed from the point of view of.... . The implementation of.... provides basis for.... of proposed.....
Approaches to the.... of.... in the.... are demonstrated on ....examples.
The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated on building a .... . This system, capable to .... Provides a basis for.. (its future ....).
d) Contributions
The main contribution of this thesis is the proposal of two new methods:/ the method for .... and the method for.... .
Mechanisms for.... were analysed and the.... was defined. A .... architecture for ... was proposed, based upon ....
The concept of the .... was introduced.
Rules for .... of .... system with a given number of .... were stated/
/ and their ... proved.
A .... description based on a ..... was introduced and supported with the ..../
/ to facilitate a .... .
A ..... for developing .... was proposed and implemented.
.... structuring of ... is supported. There is a .... proposed in this .... work.
e) Conclusion and Recommendation
The paper concludes sth from sth / from sth that
We have devised a (programming techniques) for (implementing)/
/proposed methods.
We have concentrated on two aspects.... .
Results of the submitted thesis can be applied in support of.... . Results of the submitted thesis can be applied in ...., thus qualitatively/
/increasing .... to support the .... .
In particular, .... could benefit from that kind of support .
It is possible to enhance existing.... with proposed methods. A novel.... of a .... system suitable for .... was introduced.
.... was defined based on comparison of the ... . The solution of ..... has already been published. The mentioned above methods are .... .
The .... approach to .... may be useful mainly from the aspect of .... . The .... asset of this work is in .... .
3 Theoretical outlines of descriptive and informative abstracts:
The descriptive (indicative) abstract, as its name suggest, indicates the kind of information included in the report or paper. It is a description rather than an exposition (=explanation) and its outline covers [2]:
- Purpose — e.g. The purpose of this report is to discuss…
- Method — e.g. Primary and secondary research sources were studied
- Description of discussion (= piece of writing that discusses many different aspects of a subject) g. …careful consideration was given to following criteria: required materials, ease of installation, required design modification……, and operating costs.
- Key conclusion g. the report concludes that a combination of ……….should be used by…..
- Recommendations — e.g. several of these……are recommended, and designs for their implementation are included
3.1 Theoretical outline of informative abstract:
- Plan to write an abstract that is no more than 10 % of the length of the
- In the first draft, note key facts, statistics, etc. that you need to
- Do not include a statement of scope; a sentence like «this paper will look at....» is inappropriate in an informative
- Be sure to omit or condense lengthy examples, tables, and other supporting
- Revise the draft into smooth, stand-alone prose; the abstract itself should be a mini-essay.
- Edit the revision. Be sure that the abstract is complete and accurate. Double check that the abstract is written in the same voice (form) as is the paper [3].
Typically, an informative abstract answers these questions in about 100–250 words:
The informative abstract is intended to provide readers all essential information contained in the report. The informative abstract covers:
3.2 Qualities and common problems and potential uses
An effective abstract is understandable to a wide audience and uses one or more well developed paragraphs. These are unified, coherent, concise, and able to stand alone. It uses an introduction/body/conclusion structure which presents the article, paper, or report's purpose, results, conclusions, and recommendations in that order and it follows strictly the chronology of the article, paper, or report. Information is written in logical connections. New information is not suitable.
If the abstract is too long, it may be rejected — abstracts are entered on databases, and those is usually a specified maximum number of words. Abstracts are often too long because people forget to count their words and make their abstracts too detailed. Abstracts that are too long often have unnecessary details. The abstract is not the place for detailed explanations of methodology or for details about the context of your research problem because you simply do not have the space to present anything but the main points of your research
Abstract that is too short is not better. If publisher´s word limit is two hundred but an author writes only ninety words, he or she probably has not written it in sufficient detail. In many cases readers decide whether to read the rest of your research from looking at the abstract. Many writers do not give sufficient information about their findings It is like advertising [4].
Several potential uses for abstracts:
- An executive preparing a comprehensive report might ask her assistant to abstract articles from different levels of periodicals to provide information quickly and to help her decide whether to read the complete articles.
- A professional might read the abstract accompanying a journal article to decide if it is worth her time to read the full
- Libraries subscribe to abstracting journals and series (including Dissertation Abstracts International) to provide an overview of
- Certain congressional and association newsletters provide abstracts of newspaper articles that pertain to issues relevant to their
4 Conclusion
Science, research, and universities are about principles. The principles involve basic truth, good behaviours, and logical judgements. Principles in chemistry mean an element that make a consistency, especially one that gives some special quality or effect. Abstract s and headings are significant parts of mentioned writings that require authors´ professional awareness [5]. To standardize academic, scholastic, theoretical and intellectual writing supports comprehension, survey information and self discipline of authors. University teachers have to pay attention to abstract writing to improve students competencies, logical thinking, and generally to increase the university rating. More and more people use an abstract service that provide abstract from their publications. It is the topic of immediate interest in today´s knowledge based society where profit from usage of information plays more important role than that one from crude oil. Better abstracts make better articles.
References
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- Broun Special Issue for Authors and Editors 1004/1995, on line 2 Oct., 2014. — [ER]. Access mode: http://web.archive.org/web/19971014014626/http://www.mcb.co.uk/literati/write.htm
- Murray, Rowena. How to write a thesis, Berkshire: Open University Press, 2002. — 287
- Urban Stanislav LADOŃSKI Wieslav. Ja napisać dobra prace magisterska, Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej in Oskara Langego, 2003. — 236 p.
- Svec Štefan a kol. Metodológia vied o výchove. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo IRIS, 1998. — 302