An Analysis of Rhetorical Moves in Abstracts for Conference Proceedings

Abstract

An abstract plays a pivotal role because it represents the summary of the entire article. Therefore, it is the first thing that readers evaluate to determine if they should read the entire article. Hence, it is imperative for academics to provide an abstract that includes all essential rhetorical moves when writing an academic article. In lieu of this, the current study attempted to examine whether the abstracts provided in conference proceedings include the essential rhetorical moves and whether the moves are presented in the sequence according to the selected classification. The data for this study were collected using purposive sampling from 23 abstracts of empirical-based studies in nature from the selected conference. The abstracts were written in the English language and authored by academics in the field of language and education from higher institutions in various countries. Hyland's (2000) five-moves classification of rhetorical moves was used as the coding in identifying the moves structure of the selected abstracts in this study. Other moves that emerged from the selected abstracts were added to Hyland's (2000) classification. The moves structure data were analyzed using manifest content analysis while the sequence of moves data were analyzed using latent content analysis. The findings show that the majority of the abstract only partially contains the rhetorical moves as suggested by Hyland (2000) with a variety of moves sequence. Apart from Hyland's (2000) fivemoves, some authors included the theoretical aspect of their study in their abstracts. The implications of the findings were discussed within the context of professional development among higher institutions academics, particularly in academic abstract writing.

Entrepreneurial Education Conference Proceedings: A Rhetorical Moves Analysis of Abstracts

“…With regards to abstract analysis, many studies had been carried out of various natures (e.g., Bunton, 2002;Kwan, 2006;Bunton, 2005;Bonn & Swales, 2007;Cross & Oppenheim, 2006;Hongwei Ren & Yuying Li, 2011;Huckin, 2006;Hyland, 2000;Lau, 2004;Lores, 2004;Lores, 2004;Pho, 2008;Samraj, 2005;Sidek, et al, 2016;Santos, 1996;Stotesbury, 2003;Suntara & Usaha, 2013). Most of past studies focused on investigating abstracts in theses compared to past studies that examined abstracts of conference proceeding.…”

“…This shows that studies on abstracts for conference proceedings are still very few. In the study of Sidek et al (2016), they found that academics in the field of linguistics and language education who participated in the selected conference demonstrated lacking of the inclusion of rhetorical moves causing their abstracts to be presented in an incomplete way and thus affects their effectiveness. In the same study, the researchers also reported that the sample academics juggled the rhetorical moves sequence in an irregular way.…”

“…Insofar, based on mainstream publications, Sidek et al (2016) seems to be the only study that had examined abstracts for conference proceedings. Nonetheless, Sidek et al (2016) only studied abstracts in linguistics and language education conference proceedings.…”

“…Insofar, based on mainstream publications, Sidek et al (2016) seems to be the only study that had examined abstracts for conference proceedings. Nonetheless, Sidek et al (2016) only studied abstracts in linguistics and language education conference proceedings. Therefore, the current study attempted to examine the rhetorical moves in abstracts within the domain of entrepreneurial education, a cutting edge educational domain that concerns with embedding entrepreneurship in all educational disciplines.…”

Approach and Design: A Method Analysis of Efl Reading Comprehension Instruction

“…Within the Malaysian setting, numerous studies in the field of English language teaching and learning (e.g., Sidek, 2010b-EFL reading attitudes; Sidek, 2012-EFL personality traits; Sidek & Rahim, 2013;2015-cross-linguistics;Abdullah & Sidek, 2012-writing feedback;Saad et al, 2016a;2016b-EFL learning experience;Baharun et al, 2016-Task-based learning;Sidek et al, 2016a-EFL reading fluency; -abstract writing in EFL) had been conducted in order to improve the English as a second language (ESL) instructional approach. Connecting the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and language teaching, a teacher's selected instructional approach will reflect a certain theory (e.g., Sidek, 2010b).…”