科技英语讲义(摘要写作).doc

Lecture 3 Abstract (1): Category, Structure, and General Writing Requirements

As a miniature of the paper with a limited number of words, an abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceedings, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper’s purpose. Given its importance, we are to deal with the abstract writing in the following two lectures. Included in the lecture are different categories of the abstract, general structure of the abstract, general requirements in abstract writing, etc.

Lecture Objectives
After completing this lecture, you should be able to:
1. Distinguish different categories of the abstract
2. Understand the general structure of the abstract
3. Meet general writing requirements of the abstract

Different Categories of the Abstract
An abstract is a succinct summary of a piece of work, usually academic in nature. It is published in isolation from the main text and should therefore stand on its own and be understandable without reference to the whole piece. It should report the essential facts of the paper, and should not exaggerate or contain material that is not in the paper.
Being a self-contained entity, the abstract holds a critical role compared with the other parts of the whole paper. An abstract is viewed as a mini-version of the paper, summarizing the content of the main body. A well-prepared abstract serves as a useful tool in searching for information and enables readers to identify the basic content of a paper quickly and accurately, to determine its relevance to their interest, and finally to decide whether they need to read the paper in its entirety.
Abstracts can be generally classified into three categories: descriptive, informational, and informational-descriptive.

Descriptive Abstract
A descriptive abstract usually states the general subject matter of the paper. It tells in an all-round way what the paper contains.
The following is a descriptive abstract including the background, topic, approach, conclusion, and significance of the research. Please note the parts in bold, which help us understand the idea and structure better.

Ex. 3-1
Abstract
Antibodies play a central role in immunity by forming an interface with the innate immune system and, typically, mediating proinflammatory activity [background]. We describe a novel posttranslational modification that leads to anti-inflammatory activity of antibodies of immunoglobulin G, isotype 4 (IgG4) [topic]. IgG4 antibodies are dynamic molecules that exchange Fab arms by swapping a heavy chain and attached light chain (hall-molecule) with a heavy-tight chain pair from another molecule, which results in bispecific antibodies [approach]. Mutagenesis studies reveal that the third constant domain is critical for this activity. The impact of IgG4 Fab arm exchange is confirmed in vivo in a rhesus monkey model with experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis [conclusion]. IgG4 Fab arm exchange is suggested to be an important biological mechanism that provides the basis for the anti-inflammatory activity attributed to IgG4 antibodies [significance].

Informational Abstract
An informational abstract highlights the approach and conclusion briefly but quantitatively. It is a condensed version of the research work. Instead of indicating the general content, it should be specific and quantitative, giving essential data. The following example shows how this type of abstract should be structured.

Ex. 3-2
Abstract
The system analysis theory was used to establish China TIMES model system (C-TMS) to study China’s future low carbon energy development strategy [topic]. With reasonable assumption of the future economic and social development, the model system was employed to investigate China’s final and primary energy consumption and mix from 2010 to 2050, and analyze the share of the non-fossil fuels in the primary energy consumption in 2020, thus proposing a future low carbon energy development strategy [approach]. The results show that China’s energy consumption will maintain sustained and rapid growth before 2020 in both reference scenario and policy scenario, with the primary consumption in 2020 reaching 4.91 billion tones and 4.76 billion tones of coal equivalent, respectively. Excluding non-commodity fuels, non-fossil fuels will account for over 0.7 billion tones of coal equivalent by coal consumption of power supply in 2020, with the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy being 14.8 percent in the policy scenario [conclusion].

Informational-descriptive Abstract
An informational-descriptive abstract is a combined form that bears specific information about the approach and conclusion of the paper. The following abstract highlights the research approach (theory exploration and survey) on the one hand, and emphasizes the conclusion (nine factors) on the other.

Ex. 3-3 (1)
Abstract
The study of individual difference (ID) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has attracted more attention [background]. The paper focuses on some factors in predicting success among non-English major college students in specific Foreign Language Learning (FLL) context in China [topic]. Included in the study are the employment of the theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and FLL, the design of the survey, the data collection in Tsinghua University, and the analyses of the data [approach]. The results show that nine factors play a more important role in EFL learning proficiency, namely growing environment, family income, overanxiety, extroversion, strong motivation, lecture instruction, functional practice, self-initiation, and monitoring strategies [conclusion]. The research, therefore, will highlight not only the importance of ID in EFL in China, but also the necessity of taking concrete and effective measures to cater to learner’s individual needs [significance].

Basic Elements of an Abstract
(1)A Statement of the Background
A statement of the background is often summarized into one sentence, showing the background of the study. However, it is not a must in a abstract.

(2) A Statement of the Topic
A statement of the topic (or subject / purpose / aim) usually boils down to a single sentence. It states the subject of the paper, indicating its scope and objectives.

(3) A Statement of the Approach
The approach might be an analytical method, a design technique, a testing scheme, etc. It is a necessary part and should be very informative with more than one sentence.

(4) A Statement of the Conclusion
The contribution of a paper may be a theoretical or an experimental finding, a new design with improved properties, a recommended course of action, etc. The conclusion summarizes the theoretical or experimental result, and other significant items in the paper. It is regarded as one of the core elements of an abstract.

(5) A Statement of the Significance
A statement of the significance (or contribution ) is not necessary in all abstracts. The writer may or may not offer the information.
In summary, an abstract consist of three core elements (topic, approach, and conclusion). The information of research background and significance may or may not be provided unless you think it very necessary. For instance, you may restructure Ex. 3-3 (1) without the information of background and significance, which is also academic.

Ex. 3-3 (2)
Abstract
The paper focuses on some factors in predicting success among non-English major college students in specific Foreign Language Learning (FLL) context in China [topic]. Included in the study are the employment of the theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and FLL, the design of the survey, the data collection in Tsinghua University, and the analyses of the data [approach]. The results show that the nine factors play a more important role in EFL learning proficiency, namely growing environment, family income, overanxiety, extroversion, strong motivation, lecture instruction, functional practice, self-initiation, and monitoring strategies [conclusion].

Exercises and Practice
1. Work in pairs and discuss the major differences between descriptive abstract and informational abstract.

2. Read the following abstracts carefully, and analyze them in terms of categories.
Abstract 1
This paper compares American and Chinese campaign practices and reveals the prominence of culture and its impacts upon the operation of public communication campaigns. Specifically, this comparative study shows that, Chinese and American campaign practices differ in (1) ideologies and perceptions; (2) approaches and strategies; and (3) implementation and evaluations. In running the campaigns, while Americans rely heavily on mass media and concentrate on short-term goals, Chinese depend more on interpersonal influences and primarily on long-term social effects. These differences in campaign practices are however attributable to their respective cultural orientations.

Abstract 2
This paper discusses in a systematic way grammatical analysis and presentation of grammatical information in bilingual dictionaries on five levels, i.e. word class, subclass, grammatical forms, syntactic features, and usage, followed by an explanation of how to display syntactic properties and functions of words through carefully chosen examples. It treats grammatical analysis as an essential process in corpus construction and explores the possibility of presenting more grammatical information in electronic bilingual dictionaries for the benefit of foreign language teaching and learning.

Abstract 3
Neuropathic foot ulceration is a major medical and economic problem among diabetic patients, and the traditional treatment involves bed rest with complete freedom from weight bearing. We have investigated the use of walking plaster casts in the management of seven diabetic patients with long-standing, chronic foot ulcers. All ulcers healed in a median time of 6 weeks, but this therapy was not without side effects. We conclude that casting is a useful therapy for neuropathic ulcers, although several clinic visits, cast removal, and foot inspection are necessary to avoid potential side effects caused by the casting f insensitive feet.

General Structure of an Abstract
From the dimension of structure, we may take an abstract as a paragraph which usually consists of the following three major parts: topic sentence, supporting sentences and concluding sentences.

Topic Sentence
We may regard the sentence answering the question of “what” in an abstract in a topic sentence. The topic sentence always goes straightforward to the subject or the problem and indicates the primary objectives of the paper. For example:

Ex. 3-4
The paper presents a simple prescription for estimating the energy at which nuclear forces begin to play a role in heavy-ion coulomb excitation and coulomb fission experiments…

Useful Patterns of Topic Sentence
-The purpose of this paper is …
-The primary goal of this research is…
-The intention of this paper is to survey…
-The overall objective of this study is…
-In this paper, we aim at…
-Our goal has been to provide…
-The chief aim of the present work is to investigate the features of …
-The writers are now initiating some experimental investigation to establish…
-The work presented in this paper focuses on several aspects of the following…
-The problem we have outlined deals largely with the study of…
-The primary object of this fundamental research will be to reveal the cause of…
-The main objective of our investigation has been to obtain some knowledge of…
-With recent research, the write intends to outline the framework of…
-The writer attempted the set of experiments with a view to demonstrating certain phenomena…
-The experiment being made by our research group is aimed at obtaining the result of…
-Experiments on… were made in order to measure the amount of…
-The emphasis of this study lies in…

Supporting Sentences
The topic sentence is usually followed by a few supporting sentences which further specify the subject to be presented. Research methods, experiments, procedures, investigations, calculations, analyses and other significant information will be provided in this part. These supporting sentences, therefore, can be taken as the “main body” of an abstract.

Useful Patterns of Supporting Sentences
-The method used in our study is known as…
-The technique we applied is referred to as…
-The procedure they followed can be briefly described as…
-The approach adopted extensively is called…
-Detailed information has been acquired by the writers using…
-The research has recorded valuable data using the newly-developed method.
-This is a working theory which is based on the idea that…
-The experiment consisted of three steps, which are described in…
-Included in the experiment were…
-We have carried out several sets of experiments to test the validity of…
-They undertook many experiments to support the hypothesis which…
-Recent experiments in this area suggested that…
-A number of experiments were performed to check…
-Examples with actual experiment demonstrate…
-The formula is verified by…

Conclusion Sentences
As the ending part of an abstract, concluding sentences usually summarize the research results. For example;
Ex.3-5
The result of the measurement indicates that the direct method is in good agreement with the impedance method.

Useful Patterns of Concluding Sentences
-In conclusion, we state that…
-In summing up, it may be stated that…
-It is concluded that…
-The results of the experiment indicate that…
-The studies we have performed showed that…
-The pioneering studies that the writers attempted have indicated that…
-We carried out several studies which have demonstrated that…
-The research we have done suggests that…
-The investigation carried out by… has revealed that…
-All our preliminary results throw light on the nature of…
-As a result of our experiments, we concluded that…
-This fruitful work gives explanation of …
-The writer’s pioneering work has contributed to our present understanding of…
-The research work has brought about a discovery of…
-These findings of the research have led the writer to the conclusion that…
- Our work involving studies of… proves to be effective…
-The writer has come to the conclusion that…
-Finally, a summary is given of…

We have discussed the general structure of an abstract and listed a number of sentence patterns used in different parts of abstracts. However, each abstract has its own characteristics due to its subject and purpose. In preparing abstracts, therefore, the writer should choose the structure suitable to the specific paper and avoid rigidly adhering to the general structure.

General Writing Requirements of the Abstract
In or