MODULE 1

Theme 1. Difference Between Abstract and Summary

Main Difference – Abstract vs Summary

Though the two terms abstract and summary are often used
interchangeably, there is a distinct difference between abstract and summary. A
summary is a condensed version of a longer work. An abstract is a brief
summary that is found at the beginning of a research article, thesis,
etc. This is the main difference between abstract and summary. An abstract is a
type of summary.

What is an Abstract
An abstract is a short yet powerful statement or account that summarizes a
larger work. It is a brief summary of a research paper, thesis, dissertation, etc.
An abstract is typically found at the beginning of a document and it acts as an
introduction and review of the whole document. It may contain information
about the background, purpose, results, and contents of the work. An abstract
typically contains four elements: research focus, research methods, results,
main conclusions and recommendations.

An abstract can act as a stand-alone entity. Many organizations use

abstracts as the basis for selecting research. In addition, most of the research
articles available online are in the form of abstracts; the readers can decide
whether they want to purchase the article by reading the abstract. Thus, it can
be said that abstracts help the readers to decide whether they should invest time
and money in reading the whole article.
There are basically two types of abstracts: descriptive abstracts and
informative abstracts. Descriptive abstract or limited abstracts simply provide a
description of the content of the abstract (purpose, method, scope). Informative
abstracts also contain the description of the content, but it also contains the
results, conclusions and the recommendations of the author.

What is a Summary
A summary is a brief statement or account containing the central points of
a text. It can be defined as a condensed or abridged version of a text. Since it
only contains the central and most important concepts, it is considerably shorter
than the original text.
The term summary can refer to several things. A summary can be a
synopsis of a book, article, film or play. Here, the outline of the plot can be
termed as a summary. An executive summary, which is seen at the beginning of
a business report, proposal and plan, is also a summary; it summarizes the entire
content, highlighting the central points of the document. An abstract is also a
similar summary that is used in research papers.

When you are writing a summary of a given text or documents, you

should always use your words; a brief quote can be sometimes used. Since the
main purpose of this type of summary is condensing the text, it should contain
the main ideas and concepts of the original text clearly and concisely
[kən'saɪslɪ]. Your opinions and criticism of the original text should not be
written in the summary. In addition, it shouldn’t contain things like examples,
details or any unnecessary information.

Difference Between Abstract and Summary

Definition
Abstract is a concise summary found at the beginning of a research article.
Summary is a brief statement or account of the main points of a longer work.
Interconnection
Abstract is a type of a summary.
Summary can be a synopsis, abstract or an executive summary.
Content
Abstract should contain the research purpose, method, results, conclusion and
recommendations.
Summary should contain the focal points of the original work.
 Theme 2. Principles of abstract writing

What is an abstract?
An abstract is a 150- to 250-word paragraph that provides readers with a
quick overview of your essay or report and its organization. It should express
your thesis (or central idea) and your key points; it should also suggest any
implications or applications of the research you discuss in the paper.
According to Carole Slade, an abstract is “a concise summary of the entire
paper.”
 The function of an abstract is to describe, not to evaluate or defend, the
paper.
 The abstract should begin with a brief but precise statement of the
problem or issue, followed by a description of the research method and design,
the major findings, and the conclusions reached.
 The abstract should contain the most important key words referring to
method and content: these facilitate access to the abstract by computer search
and enable a reader to decide whether to read the entire dissertation.
Note: Your abstract should read like an overview of your paper, not a
proposal for what you intended to study or accomplish. Avoid beginning your
sentences with phrases like, “This essay will examine...” or “In this research
paper I will attempt to prove...”

Bad abstract: Good abstract:

This paper will look at the human
genome project and its goals. I will
prove that scientists have ethical and
moral questions about genetic
engineering because of this project.
Begun in 1988, the human genome
project intends to map the 23
chromosomes that provide the
blueprint for the human species. The
project has both scientific and ethical
goals. The scientific goals underscore
the advantages of the genome project,
including identifying and curing
diseases and enabling people to select
the traits of their offspring, among
other opportunities. Ethically,
however, the project raises serious
questions about the morality of genetic
engineering. To handle both the
medical opportunities and ethical
dilemmas posed by the genome
project, scientists need to develop a
clear set of principles for genetic
engineering and to continue educating
the public about the genome project.
(The examples above are taken from Form and Style (10th ed.), by Carole
Slade; The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers (5th ed.); and the
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.).)

Note: The following are specifications for an abstract in APA style, used

in the social sciences, such as psychology or anthropology. If you are in another
discipline, check with your professor about the format for the abstract.

How to Write a Good Abstract: 5 Golden Rules

Writing an abstract is one of the most important skills for researchers who
are ready to share their work. Whether you are submitting your scholarly article
to a journal or preparing your research abstract for consideration at a
conference, mastering how to write a good abstract with the following five rules
will make your abstract stand out from the crowd!

1. Follow the guidelines.

Abstracts for scholarly articles are somewhat different than abstracts for
conferences. Additionally, different journals, associations, and fields adhere to
different guidelines.
Thus, make sure that your abstract includes exactly what is asked for, that
the content ties in appropriately, and that you’ve followed any formatting rules.
Be sure to check the guidelines to determine if the journal or conference
has specific expectations for the abstract, such as whether it should be a
structured abstract or just one paragraph.
A structured abstract contains subheads and separate paragraphs for each
elements, such as background, method, results, and conclusions.

2. Be sure the abstract has everything you need — no more, no less.

Readers should be able to quickly grasp your purpose, methods, thesis,
and results within the abstract.
You need to provide all this information in a concise and coherent way.
The full-length article or presentation is for providing more details and
answering questions.
For a conference presentation, it may also be necessary to narrow in on
one particular aspect of your research, as time may prevent you from covering a
larger project.
In addition, an abstract usually does not include citations or bibliographic
references, descriptions of routine assessments, or information about how
statistics were formulated.
Note also that while some comments on the background may be included,
readers are going to be most interested in the particulars of your specific project
and your particular results.
3. Use keywords.
In the age of electronic database searches, keywords are vital. Keywords
should be added in a separate line after your abstract.
For example, the American Psychological Association recommends using
natural language — everyday words you think of in relation to your topic—and
picking three to five keywords (McAdoo 2015).
For example, keywords for a study on hawks might include: hawks, prey,
territory, or behavior.

4. Report your results and conclusions.

An abstract should report what you did, not what you plan to do, so avoid
language like hope, plan, try, or attempt. Use the past tense to indicate that the
study was already completed. Your results, thesis, and a brief summary of your
conclusions should also be included.
Many readers often don’t read past the abstract, so you want to give them
a clear snapshot of not only what your research was about but also what you
determined. Be sure to also include the “so what”—the conclusions, potential
applications, and why they matter.

5. Make your title strong.

Your title is your first impression — it’s your chance to draw in your
readers, such as conference reviewers, colleagues, and scientists outside your
field. Before your abstract will be read, your title must catch their eye first.
In no more than 12 words, the title should convey something about your
subject and the “hook” of your research as concisely and clearly as possible.
Focus on what you investigated and how.
Don’t repeat your title in your abstract though; you will need the space for
the details of your study in your abstract.

Tip: Using active verbs can strengthen a title. A brief search of scientific
articles brought up titles with verbs like “mediate,” “enhance,” and “reveal.”
Use a thesaurus or style guide for more ideas for strong verb choices.

Because you have to put so much into a short body of text, writing an
abstract can definitely be challenging. As with any writing, it helps to practice
as well as to study other examples.

To improve your abstract-writing skills, review abstracts of articles in

journals and in conference proceedings to get an idea of how researchers in
your field approach specific subjects and research.
Theme 3. Principles of summary writing

How to write a summary: principles

Summing-up is a technique that follows strict rules:
1. The original text is cut to about one third.
2. Only the main ideas are mentioned; that means that no examples or
repetitions are allowed.
3. Specific statements are combined to form general statements.
4. Direct or reported speech are changed into statements, with the exception of
very important quotations.
When you have to sum up written texts follow these hints:
1. Read the text quickly in order to find the main ideas (skimming)
2. If necessary look at special passages of the text in order to make clear that
you've got all the main ideas (scanning).
3. Take a pencil and underline the most important words (marking).
4. Write down key-words, i.e. words that sum up the meaning of the text, but
which needn't necessarily occur in the text (making notes).
5. Sum up the key-words in simple sentences (summing up in simple form)
6. Combine the simple sentences by using conjunctions like "as, though,
because, since" etc or participle constructions or infinitives (summing up in
complex form).
7. Compare the original text with your text to find out that you've got the
essential information (check).

Guidelines for Writing a Summary

When you underline and annotate a text, when you ask yourself questions
about its contents, when you work out an outline of its structure, you are
establishing your understanding of what you are reading. When you write a
summary, you are demonstrating your understanding of the text and
communicating it to your reader.
To summarize is to condense a text to its main points and to do so in your
own words. To include every detail is neither necessary nor desirable. Instead,
you should extract only those elements that you think are most important—the
main idea (or thesis) and its essential supporting points, which in the original
passage may have been interwoven with less important material.
Many students make the mistake of confusing summary with analysis.
They are not the same thing. An analysis is a discussion of ideas, techniques,
and/or meaning in a text. A summary, on the other hand, does not require you to
critique or respond to the ideas in a text. When you analyze a piece of writing,
you generally summarize the contents briefly in order to establish for the reader
the ideas that your essay will then go on to analyze, but a summary is not a
substitute for the analysis itself.
 If you are writing a literature paper, for example, your teacher probably
does not want you to simply write a plot summary. You may include some very
brief summary within a literature paper, but only as much as necessary to make
your own interpretation, your thesis, clear.
It is important to remember that a summary is not an outline or synopsis
of the points that the author makes in the order that the author gives them.
Instead, a summary is a distillation of the ideas or argument of the text. It is a
reconstruction of the major point or points of development of a text, beginning
with the thesis or main idea, followed by the points or details that support or
elaborate on that idea.
If a text is organized in a linear fashion, you may be able to write a
summary simply by paraphrasing the major points from the beginning of the
text to the end. However, you should not assume that this will always be the
case. Not all writers use such a straightforward structure. They may not state the
thesis or main idea immediately at the beginning, but rather build up to it
slowly, and they may introduce a point of development in one place and then
return to it later in the text.
However, for the sake of clarity, a summary should present the author’s
points in a straightforward structure. In order to write a good summary, you
may have to gather minor points or components of an argument from different
places in the text in order to summarize the text in an organized way. A point
made in the beginning of an essay and then one made toward the end may need
to be grouped together in your summary to concisely convey the argument that
the author is making. In the end, you will have read, digested, and reconstructed
the text in a shorter, more concise form.

WHEN AND HOW TO SUMMARIZE

There are many instances in which you will have to write a summary.
You may be assigned to write a one or two page summary of an article or
reading, or you may be asked to include a brief summary of a text as part of a
response paper or critique. Also, you may write summaries of articles as part of
the note-taking and planning process for a research paper, and you may want to
include these summaries, or at least parts of them, in your paper. The writer of a
research paper is especially dependent upon summary as a means of referring to
source materials. Through the use of summary in a research paper, you can
condense a broad range of information, and you can present and explain the
relevance of a number of sources all dealing with the same subject.
You may also summarize your own paper in an introduction in order to
present a brief overview of the ideas you will discuss throughout the rest of the
paper.
Depending on the length and complexity of the original text as well as
your purpose in using summary, a summary can be relatively brief—a short
paragraph or even a single sentence—or quite lengthy—several paragraphs or
even an entire paper.

QUALITIES OF A SUMMARY
A good summary should be comprehensive, concise, coherent, and
independent. These qualities are explained below:
A summary must be comprehensive: You should isolate all the important
points in the original passage and note them down in a list. Review all the ideas
on your list, and include in your summary all the ones that are indispensable to
the author's development of her/his thesis or main idea.
A summary must be concise: Eliminate repetitions in your list, even if the
author restates the same points. Your summary should be considerably shorter
than the source. You are hoping to create an overview; therefore, you need not
include every repetition of a point or every supporting detail.
A summary must be coherent: It should make sense as a piece of writing in its
own right; it it should not merely be taken directly from your list of notes or
sound like a disjointed collection of points.
A summary must be independent: You are not being asked to imitate the
author of the text you are writing about. On the contrary, you are expected to
maintain your own voice throughout the summary. Don't simply quote the
author; instead use your own words to express your understanding of what you
have read. After all, your summary is based on your interpretation of the
writer's points or ideas. However, you should be careful not to create any
misrepresentation or distortion by introducing comments or criticisms of your
own.

TWO TECHNIQUES FOR WRITING SUMMARIES

Summarizing Shorter Texts (ten pages or fewer)
Write a one-sentence summary of each paragraph.
Formulate a single sentence that summarizes the whole text.
Write a paragraph (or more): begin with the overall summary sentence and
follow it with the paragraph summary sentences.
Rearrange and rewrite the paragraph to make it clear and concise, to eliminate
repetition and relatively minor points, and to provide transitions. The final
version should be a complete, unified, and coherent.
Summarizing Longer Texts (more than ten pages)
Outline the text. Break it down into its major sections—groups of paragraphs
focused on a common topic—and list the main supporting points for each
section.
Write a one or two sentence summary of each section.
Formulate a single sentence to summarize the whole text, looking at the author's
thesis or topic sentences as a guide.
Write a paragraph (or more): begin with the overall summary sentence and
follow it with the section summary sentences.
Rewrite and rearrange your paragraph(s) as needed to make your writing clear
and concise, to eliminate relatively minor or repetitious points, and to provide
transitions. Make sure your summary includes all the major supporting points of
each idea. The final version should be a complete, unified, and coherent.
Theme 4. Types of references formatting: MLA, APA, Chicago Manual,
VAK

Citation styles guide: Choosing a style and citing correctly

A citation style is a set of rules on how to cite sources in academic
writing. Whenever you refer to someone else’s work, a citation is required to
avoid plagiarism.
Citation style guidelines are often published in an official handbook
containing explanations, examples, and instructions. The most common citation
styles are the following:

MLA style in the humanities (e.g. literature or languages).

APA style in the social sciences (e.g. psychology or education).
Chicago notes and bibliography in history.
Chicago author-date in the sciences.
However, there are many other widely used styles.

Differences between citation styles

Different citation styles have different rules for in-text citations, reference
list entries, and (sometimes) the formatting of your paper. The differences can
be very subtle, so it’s important to carefully check the rules of the style you are
using.
Types of in-text citation
When you refer to a source (for example, by quoting or paraphrasing),
you have to add a brief citation in the text. There are three main types of
citation:
Parenthetical citation: You put the source reference in parentheses
directly in your text. This usually includes the author’s last name along with the
publication date and/or the page number.
Note citation: You put the source reference in a footnote or endnote.
Numeric citation: You number each of your sources in the reference list
and use the correct number when you want to cite a source.
Below is an overview of the systems used in the most common citation
styles.

Citation style Disciplines Type of citation

MLA Humanities Parenthetical (author-
page number)
APA Psychology, education, Parenthetical (author-
social sciences date)
Chicago A History, humanities Notes
Chicago B Sciences, social sciences, Parenthetical (author-
humanities date)
Turabian Humanities, social Notes or author-date
sciences, sciences
Harvard Economics Parenthetical (author-
date)
Vancouver Medicine Numeric
OSCOLA Law Notes
IEEE Engineering, IT Numeric
AMA Medicine Numeric
ACS Chemistry Numeric, Author-page
number or Notes
NLM Medicine Numeric
AAA Anthropology, social Numeric
studies
APSA Political science Parenthetical (author-
date)

Reference list entries

At the end of your paper, you include a list of all the sources you cited.
Each entry on the list corresponds to an in-text citation, and gives the reader full
publication information to easily find the source.
Citation styles differ in the naming of this list: in APA it is the reference
page, in MLA it is the works cited, and in Chicago A it is the bibliography.
There are also differences in the order of information and how you format
each entry. The format often depends on the type of source (e.g. book, website,
or journal article).

Formatting
Some citation styles also have rules about the formatting of your paper as
a whole. This might include guidelines for what should go on the cover page;
margins, spacing and font size; titles and headings; or even how to write
numbers and abbreviations.
However, these rules are generally more flexible and less important than
the citation rules. It’s a good idea to check if your citation style has formatting
guidelines, but if not, aim for a clear, consistent and easily readable format.
APA vs MLA
 Chicago style

Tasks

Theme 1: Написання резюме та матеріалів дослідження в рамках

мовознавчих дисциплін та підходів. Укладання списків літератури.

1. Analyze the abstracts to several scientific articles. What elements do they contain.
What makes them effective. Where can such abstracts be submitted to? (texts
enclosed)
2. Look at the evaluative summaries to several books on linguistics. How does the
author organize his/her ideas? What makes them effective? (your choice)
3. Write your own evaluative summary based on the article. What ideas do you
consider important for your future research? (your choice)
4. Make references according to MLA, APA, Chicago Manual and VAK styles.

5. Write your own evaluative summary based on the article.