MA abstract writing : balancing Language and content beyond descriptive prescriptive dictates

Abstract EN

The main purpose of abstract writing has been overshadowed by descriptivists who hypothesize linguistic frames about how and why certain elements and functions should be used and sequenced in the abstract (Swales & Feak, 2004), and by prescriptivists who argue that the abstract should be brief, adequate and readable (Chan and Foo, 2004, p.

103).

The present study assumes that for pedagogical purposes, one should benefit from descriptive predictions and utilize instructional rules for writing abstracts properly.

To study the textual structure in abstract writing, this paper examines the language of 34 English MA abstracts written by students in the Department of Education at King Faisal University.

The results reveal that there are no statistical correlations among the textual components in the sample such as topic, literature and data.

This is in addition to the erroneous language and the discrepancy between the language level and the academic content manifested in the sample abstracts.

The paper recommends adopting a genre-based approach which focuses on specific information blocks – components— in teaching abstract writing to equip learners with a simple, effective use of the rich information available to them in their subject-domain.