1. Do abstracts represent the article?

2. Previous research into abstracts
Survey of 20 articles
8 articles concern genre structure
8 articles concern linguistic features
3 articles concern content *
1 articles concerns readers’ reactions *
For content and readers’ reactions, only one of the articles is published in applied linguistics

3. Goals of abstracts
ISO 214:1976 defines an abstract as “an abbreviated, accurate representation of the contents of a document”
Original intention: abstract – article match comparison between applied linguistics and, say, genetics
Start by analysing 4 applied linguistics articles

4. 4 applied linguistics articles
No. clauses in abstract
Mean no. words in article/ abstract clause SD
No. abstract clauses not clearly linked to article
Sequence match
No. abstract clauses for each article section I M R D 1 17
619
920 2
Yes 12 18
345
484 5 No 3 7 11
839
586 4 10
752
539

5. Qualitative v. quantitative articles
Qualitative articles
Quantitative articles
Articles 1 and 2
Difficult to analyse
No. of words in article / abstract clause: SD >
Abstract clauses not linked to article
Bias in article sections reported in abstract
Articles 3 and 4
Straightforward to analyse
Even distribution of abstract to article
Change research goal to comparing quantitative and qualitative applied linguistics articles?