A Generic Comparison Of English Abstracts Between Chinese And English Journals

As the miniature of the research article, abstract is an important genre which possesses three functions of assisting readers in quickly grasping the main points of the article, aiding writers in promoting their academic achievements, and helping learners to keep up with the newest advances in their areas. In light of its significance, abstract has been the focus of many studies in recent years (Swales, 1990). However, from the perspective of genre, the comparative analysis of English abstracts between Chinese and English journals has been rarely done. This thesis is designed to fill the gap.In order to find out the similarities and differences of English abstracts between Chinese and English journals, the present study established two databases by randomly selecting 60 English abstracts from the academic journals which were published in 2007, 2008, 2009. The 30 samples in Database 1 were chosen from two Chinese journals (Foreign Language World; Foreign Language Teaching and Research), and the 30 samples in Database 2 were taken from two English journals (ELT journal; TESOL Quarterly).By randomly selecting 15 abstracts from each database, the thesis conducted the pilot study and put forward the moves & steps of the English abstract. Having analyzed all samples, the move structure of the English abstract has been finally concluded as BIMRP: background—introduction—methodology—result—implication.On the basis of BIMRP, the thesis employed descriptive statistics and independent samples T test from the software SPSS to compare the two databases mainly in terms of the abstract length, the sentence number of the abstract, the co-occurrence frequency of moves, the occurrence frequency of moves, the length of moves and the move order. In addition, each move has also been analyzed in detail from the perspective of genre.It turns out that both similarities and differences exist between Chinese journals and English journals. According to the findings, pedagogical implications have been given.By examining the generic structures of English abstracts between Chinese and English research journals, we expect that the present study can not only heighten learners'awareness of the Chinese-English cultural differences but also improve their abstract writing.