Transcript Writing an abstract - Univerzita Karlova v Praze

Academic writing
Lucie Poslušná
Department of Foreign Languages
[email protected]
Features of academic English
Complexity (longer words, more varied vocabulary, nounbased phrases, passives)
You can control the trains this way and if you do that you can be quite
sure that they'll be able to run more safely and more quickly than they
would otherwise, no matter how bad the weather gets.
The use of this method of control unquestionably leads to safer and
faster train running in the most adverse weather conditions.
Features of academic English
Formality
Informal/Neutral
seem
begin
at first
so
understanding
enough
put off
Formal
appear
commence
initially
therefore
comprehension
sufficient
postpone
Features of academic English
Precision
There were a lot of people.
Several scientists claim that…
Features of academic English
Objectivity (arguments, not you)
We don't really know what
language proficiency is but many
people have talked about it for a
long time. Some researchers have
tried to find ways for us to make
teaching
and
testing
more
communicative because that is how
language works. I think that
language is something we use for
communicating, not an object for us
to study and we remember that
when we teach and test it.
The question of what constitutes "language
proficiency" and the nature of its cross-lingual
dimensions is also at the core of many hotly
debated issues in the areas of bilingual
education and second language pedagogy and
testing. Researchers have suggested ways of
making second language teaching and testing
more "communicative" (e.g., Canale and
Swain, 1980; Oller, 1979b) on the grounds that
a communicative approach better reflects the
nature of language proficiency than one which
emphasizes the acquisition of discrete
language skills.
Features of academic English
Explicitness (signposting, referencing)
He is born into a family, he marries into a family, and he becomes the husband and
father of his own family. In addition, he has a definite place of origin and more
relatives than he knows what to do with, and he receives a rudimentary education
at the Canadian Mission School.
McGreil (1977: 363-408) has shown that though Dubliners find the English more
acceptable than the Northern Irish, Dubliners still seek a solution to the Northern
problem within an all-Ireland state.
Features of academic English
Accuracy (in vocabulary use)
money x cash x currency x capital x funds
Features of academic English
Hedging
(being cautious)
There is experimental work to show that a week or ten days may not be
long enough and a fortnight to three weeks is probably the best
theoretical period.
It may be said that the commitment to some of the social and
economic concepts was less strong than it is now.
Features of academic English
Responsibility
- for demonstrating an understanding of the source text –
paraphrasing, summarising, citation
- providing evidence for any claims made
1. Members of avian species of identical plumage congregate.
2. It is fruitless to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated
canine with innovative manners.
3. It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitately
departed lactate fluid.
1. Birds of feather flock together.
2. You can‘t teach an old dog new tricks.
3. It is no use crying over spilled milk.
This paper examines interaction in written text through the interplay between the notions
of text averral and attribution (Sinclair, 1988). Text averral is evidenced in the unmarked
parts of the text, where the utterances are assumed to be attributed to the author.
Attribution, the counterpart of text averral, is the marked case where the sources of
authority are clearly signalled.
It is hoped that this study will add to our knowledge about the characteristics of different
types of text, and illuminate the way for students who find themselves lost amidst the
echoes of the multiple voices they hear within the same text.
Text averral and attribution are basic notions for the organization of interaction in written
text. The assumption is made that the author of a non-fictional artefact (Sinclair, 1986)
avers every statement in his or her text so long as he/she does not attribute these
statements to another source - whether that source is other or self. Averral is manifested
in various ways in the text - negatively, through absence of attribution, and positively,
through commenting, evaluating or metastructuring of the discourse. Attribution, on the
other hand, is signalled in the text by a number of devices of which reporting is an obvious
one.
With academic writing, the specificity of the subject often leads to a
condition where the substance of the writing is intact, but the narrative
cohesion is lacking. This creates a condition where the reader must
laboriously make his way through the text trying to gain the meaning and
intent of the writer. The author of the text often goes to great lengths to
obscure the intent of the writing by hiding behind difficult concepts that are
bereft of examples. This is especially true for academic writers from Central
Europe. This article will examine tools used by professional writers and how
they can be effectively used by non-native writers in English to create a more
interesting narrative in their own publication.
Key words: academic writing, cohesion, nominalization, rhetoric style
Abstract checklist
Length
200 – 350 words:
- other people‘s work, previous research literature – 50-60 words
- your own theory/position – at least 50 words
- your methods – 50-150 words
- your new findings – as many words as possible within the limit
- the value added of your work – 30-50 words
Abstract checklist
- Are the ideas connected?
- How many theme words from the text recur in the abstract?
- Style (The research sets out to prove x The research proves; present tense)
- Do the first three lines of the abstract make me want to read the whole
text?
- How frequent are your most distinctive words/key words if you type them
into Google Scholar?
Abstract example
The 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima might have falsified long-standing expert
assertions that nuclear power is ‘safe’, yet it has failed to do so. This paper
looks at why. It explores two core tenets of post-Fukushima nuclear discourse:
(1) that nuclear meltdowns will not occur; and (2) that nuclear accidents are
‘tolerable’. In each case, it outlines how accounts of the disaster shield the
credibility of the wider nuclear industry; and it then explains why these
accounts are misleading. In doing so, it offers a critical perspective on the
public discourse around technological risk and disaster. It concludes with a
brief discussion of the sociology of denial. Invoking both the agnotology and
science and technology (STS) literatures, it argues that it is often more fruitful
to temper claims of deception with a recognition of the genuine ambiguities
and structural weaknesses of complex knowledge-claims.
Sources
http://www.uefap.com/writing/writfram.htm
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/06/20/essentialguide-writing-good-abstracts/
http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/CARR/publications/
dpAbstracts.aspx