Irina Tverdokhlebova is Associate Professor and Head of Russian and Foreign Languages Chair at Russian State University for Geological Prospecting, Moscow. She has extensive experience of working in secondary and higher educational institutions in Russia, British Council Scholar  and Lecturer (1990-1996) at the University of Surrey (UK), founder and Head of English Phonetics and Business Communication Chair at Moscow City Teacher Training University (1998-2016), currently is also Chief Editor of "Foreign Languages at School" - an all-Russia scientific research and methodological journal. Email: tverdohlebovaip@mgri.ru 

Liliya Makovskaya is a senior lecturer in the Global Education Department of Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She has several years of experience in teacher training and material design. Liliya has been involved in a number of joint research projects with international organisations. Her research interests lie in assessment in higher education, second language writing, feedback, academic vocabulary, and discourse analysis. Email: lmakovskaya@wiut.uz

 

Abstract

The article deals with meeting the needs of contemporary scholars in expanding their academic literacy and enhancing research culture. The authors address issues of academically relevant writing practices for MA/MSc/Ph.D students, early-career researchers, and practising high school and university teachers. Based on the analysis of original scientific abstract submissions, the research study identifies the scholarly quality, strengths and weaknesses of non-native English practising teachers’ writing skills who succeeded in having published their articles in professional journals. Particular focus is given to determining structure, specific language, logical flow of ideas, and style. Essential suggestions for improving abstract writing skills are provided.

 

Background

The spectrum of essential academic activities for the participants in scientific research and innovations is varied. It includes such main types as scientific research, expertise, project-work, promotion of theory and practical recommendations, pedagogical activity in higher educational institutions and many others that presuppose public presentation and exchange of intellectual products. These activities require the development of relevant competencies that form the basis for individual academic research culture.

It should be noted that teaching English for Academic purposes exemplifies different approaches to language teaching and learning. In methodological terms, there is an apparent discrepancy in how students’ academic writing excellence may be achieved. In short, many scholars’ traditional view of teaching foreign languages was focused on the traditional triangle of ‘knowledge-skills-competences’ development. However, the new millennium has given rise to the perceptions of a new triangle ‘skills-socialization-literacy’ formation (Hyland, 2006).

The authors of this publication share the opinion that in modern educational environments, both in Uzbekistan and Russia, practising university-level language teachers adhere to a concept that combines the core assets of both methodological triangles - ‘skills-competences-socialization-literacy-academic culture’. Unfortunately, there seem to be no contradictions, but only an attempt to bring together in a dialectical unity the significant stages of gradual and purposeful mastery development in students who aspire to achieve better results in their EFL and EAP capacities.

Undoubtedly, the EAP instruction at the high school and university level is based on the needs of students and their careful preparation for successful and independent activities beyond the level of the teacher-monitored academic environment. Real-world interactions require a broad range of skills and academic strategies in learners, from notetaking, resume writing, and referencing to essay and thesis writing.

As educational statistics demonstrate, in the past thirty years (since 1993), the number of young people who have graduated from universities with BA or MA degrees has doubled from 445,0 to 908,6 thousand (2020) in Russia only. According to current requirements, MA students should have at least one article published before defending their thesis. Wouldn’t it be correct to assume that the number of published articles by MA graduates has also nearly doubled? Besides, there is a growing number of exchange programmes for students, and academic mobility involves early-career researchers and university lecturers. Thus, the demand for domestic and international publications due to formal requirements has become evident.

Academic research culture is complex and includes professional observation skills and research competencies as integral to a life-long educational system. It also allows researchers to share best practices and theoretical foundations and, to a large extent, support Teacher Professional Development (TPD). In recent years the demand for international publications in English has increased multi-fold and gave rise to better meeting the challenge of the growing necessity to bridge the gap in linguistic tradition and cultural discrepancy in abstract writing.

 

What is an abstract?

A great number of definitions for a paper abstract can be found in scientific and methodological literature. The majority agree that it is a short paragraph, usually 150-300 words, that summarises a research-based paper. The specialists of the UW-Madison Writing Centre (2022) also clarify that “a well-written abstract lets readers get the gist or essence of your paper or article quickly, in order to decide whether to read the full paper; prepares readers to follow the detailed information, analyses, and arguments in your full paper; helps readers remember key points from your paper”.

The structure of a paper abstract might vary depending on the journal requirements; however, a universally accepted structure is very similar, i.e., an abstract:   

(1) begins with a broad statement about the topic;

(2) states the problem or knowledge gap related to this topic that the study explores;

(3) describes what specific aspect of this problem is investigated;

(4) briefly explains how the researcher went about doing this;

(5) describes the most meaningful outcome(s) of the study;

(6) closes the abstract by explaining the broad implication(s) of the findings.

Apart from the structure, most sources also propose using specific set phrases in abstract writing, which might be helpful to both novice and experienced writers. These word combinations are usually presented in separate sections, such as introduction/background information, the aim of the study, methods, results, implications, and conclusion, i.e., following the logical structure of the abstract. Finally, the study skills of a contemporary researcher need to meet unfamiliar demands of modern kinds of scholarly discourse to expand their academic literacy (Hyland, 2006). In this respect, raising issues of academic writing practices appears to be relevant. Therefore, analysing the abstracts of current research papers was essential to reveal the general key issues and effectuate them in improving students’/teachers’ ability in this genre of academic writing.

 

Study conducted

The main goal of our research study was to identify characteristics of a good abstract for a scholarly article. The particular focus was to determine the structure, specific language, and logical flow of ideas, to describe the strengths and weaknesses of style, and to derive suggestions for improving the quality of sample abstracts. For this study, we analysed the paper abstracts submitted to one of the scientific journals for English language teachers. The samples belonged to MA/MSc/Ph.D. students, early-career researchers, practising high school and university teachers, and high-brow academics interested in modern scientific research. The target audience actively participates in scientific projects and is interested in having their work published in international professional journals. We assume that participants of the study have worked on various written papers, i.e., scholarly essays, professional articles, and research summaries, in their native language but have limited experience in writing those in English.

 

Findings

The paper analysis reveals that abstracts produced by non-native English writers contain the following points for improvement:

• no clear or irrelevant structure
• long and complicated sentences
• a great number of verbal phrases
• passive voice structures
• stringing of Genitive cases and infinitives
• excessive use of expressions with similar prepositions “of/for/with”
• use of personal pronouns

Most non-English speaking writers tend to write long, complicated sentences that contain a significant number of verbal phrases, passive voice structures and excessive use of the prepositional expressions with “of/for”. Based on their investigation, Hu et al. (2021) found that abstracts of highly cited scholarly papers mostly have noun phrases, adverbial phrases, and gerunds. Thus, for abstract writing in English, researchers recommend using fewer verb phrases, prepositional phrases, and negative sentences in abstract writing to make the meaning clear. Another frequent imperfection that marks the quality of non-native-written abstracts in EFL methodology is their inappropriate structure. This feature has also been singled out in the rhetorical structure of abstract analysis in sociology. For example, Lores-Sanz (2016) indicated that most non-Anglophone academics do not follow the suggested IMRD (introduction-method-results-discussion) structure accepted by the Anglophone academic world but adapt it either by simplifying or creating a new pattern. Although IMRD stages are recommended, Nessi (2012) clarifies that “as genres reflect the contexts in which they are produced, and the social and educational contexts are changing all the time, genres, too, change over time”.

The following sample illustrates some of the main aspects mentioned in the general findings. Although the abstract is of an accepted length (120 words), it does not strictly follow the proposed structure. It also has excessive use of the preposition “of” (which might be the interference of the native language) and repetitive words (e.g., multilingual). 

Title: Multilingual engineer: myth or reality? Abstract: The article discusses the basics of the concept of multilingual training of technical university students, the purpose of which is the formation of multilingual communicative competence. The authors raise the problem of training multilingual specialists at a technical university, where foreign languages are not among the educational priorities. Hands-on experience of teaching future engineers based on the multilingual approach is described, the most effective technologies for teaching several foreign languages are highlighted, the three-dimensional construct of architecture of the multilingual environment as an important component of multilingual training of technical university students is analysed. Particular attention is paid to the issues of updating the general educational activities of future multilingual personnel and problems related to the training of multilingual teachers.

Our analysis of the abstracts also confirmed some of the suggestions provided by the specialists of the University of Southern California (2022), who identified several aspects that should be avoided in abstract writing: lengthy background or contextual information; redundant phrases, unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and repetitive information; acronyms or abbreviations; using ellipticals [i.e., ending with "..."] or incomplete sentences; jargon or terms that may be confusing to the reader; any image, illustration, figure, or table, or references to them.

 

Recommendations

Based on the data analysis, the following recommendations on writing abstracts for research-based articles can be proposed for non-native English writers:

• It is essential to look carefully for native language interference cases as the abstract analysis shows excessive use of the genitive case (preposition “of”), and long complicated sentence structures might impede understanding of the meaning.
• Although the requirements of the journals might differ, non-Anglophone researchers should not misjudge academic culture differences in the abstract structure of English-medium journals.
• In a research-based paper, writers should produce the abstract after accomplishing the full article. Non-English native writers tend to write abstracts before completing an article, which is one of the greatest mistakes as the abstract is the first part to see in the paper, but the last to write.
• It is required to proofread for stringing errors as they lead to paper rejection even though the content and structure can follow the journal requirements.
• As research-based writing has its writing style, it is crucial to adhere to strict requirements for stylistic excellence as this will help make the paper clear and concise.
• Non-English writers should beware of pedagogical versus editors’ views as they might slightly differ in their requirements for writing.

The overall methodological value of the study lies in improving students’ academic literacy and raising students’ awareness of some features and specialised techniques for abstract writing in English, as well as some relevant cross-cultural characteristics that students could beneficially train themselves to use when working on scientific-research manuscripts for publication.

 

References

Hu, H., Wang, D. & Deng, S. (2021). Analysis of the scientific literature’s abstract writing style and citations. Online Information Review 45 (7), 1290-1305. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0188.

Hyland, K. (2006). English for academic purposes: an advanced resource book. Abingdon: Routledge.

Lores-Sanz, R. (2016). ELF in the making? simplification and hybridity in abstract writing. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 5(1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2016-0003.

Nessi, H. (2012). Families of genres of assessed writing. In: Nessi, H. & Gardner, S. eds. Genres across the Disciplines Student Writing in Higher Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 21-56.

University of Southern California (2022). The Abstract. USC Libraries. Available from https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/abstract

University of Wisconsin-Madison (2022). Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper. The Writing Centre. Available from https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/writing-an-abstract-for-your-research-paper/

 

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