A Generic Structure Of Thesis Abstracts Written By Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Due to a large number of academic information available throughout the world, research abstracts have become extremely important. Abstracts are used by readers to access an article, by journals to pick contributions, by conferences to approve or reject papers (Lores, 2004 as cited in Al-Khasawneh, 2017). Therefore, in this study, the writer would like to analyze the generic structure of a thesis abstract by using Swales & Feak’s (2004) model, namely (1) background, (2) aim, (3) method, (4) results, and (5) conclusion. In order to analyze the genre or generic structure of thesis abstracts, this study uses a qualitative case study approach. Ten (10) English thesis abstracts written by undergraduate students from the English education study program are collected using purposeful random sampling. The researcher sorts the thesis abstracts from the last two years and the theses which have used the quantitative method as their methodology. Findings show that the purpose move (M2), the method move (M3), and the result/finding move (M4) were the most frequent moves that occurred in the abstracts written by undergraduate students enrolled in the English education study program. However, the introduction move (M1) and the conclusion/discussion move (M5) occur less frequently. It could be concluded that the majority of the thesis abstract follows Swales & Feak’s (2004) five-move pattern. While in some thesis abstracts, the move “introduction” and “conclusion” are not included.