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