engleski

In a nutshell: the quality of thesis abstracts of Croatian students

As abstracts are prerequisites for publication in journals as well as conference and grant applications, writing an efficient abstract is a very important yet a hard and challenging task, particularly demanding for students who often need to write their thesis abstracts in L2 English. In order to shed additional light on the characteristics and problematic aspects of abstract writing in L2 English at the academic level, the present study presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of 100 thesis abstracts written by Croatian undergraduate and graduate students of the humanities and social sciences. The aim of the study was to analyse the quality of the abstracts by assessing their content based on pre-determined criteria and determining the types and frequencies of the students’ errors. Overall, the abstracts scored quite low in the assessment of content quality, as they commonly lacked the basic information expected in a thesis abstract, such as a clear explanation of the approach or motivation for the study (Koopman, 1997). Error-wise, the students struggled most with articles and prepositions, with frequent cases of L1 interference. Lexical errors, e.g. the use 13of inappropriate synonyms or collocations, were also common, as were problems with punctuation, especially the placement of commas. The results of the analyses call attention to the weaknesses in students’ abstract writing skills. The identification of these weaknesses is essential for the development of teaching guidelines to be used for their prevention and elimination. The characteristics and the most persistent errors in the abstracts are expected to provide insight into the difficulties students experience with abstract writing, and, subsequently, to direct teachers in the areas which need to be consistently dealt with within EAP programmes.

thesis abstracts, L2 English, EAP

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