论文总字数：34822字

摘 要

一篇好的摘要能够吸引读者的注意，而相反则会使读者失去读下去的兴趣。摘要总结了全文，使读者对整篇文章可以有一个基本的了解。因此，摘要在一篇文章中起着至关重要的作用。

如何进行核心期刊与非核心期刊之间摘要质量的比较？本文基于论文的五要素对摘要质量进行了比较分析。参考John Bitchener 编著的《应用语言学论文写作指导：实证研究报告的撰写》，本文的五个要素包括引言（主要包括研究背景和研究空白）、目的、方法、结果和总结。

首先，本研究分别随机选取发表于同一年的24篇核心期刊以及24 篇非核心期刊，然后, 分析这48篇期刊文章的摘要是否包括摘要五要素。数据分析阶段，利用SPSS 软件对核心期刊和非核心期刊满足的要素进行分析比较。

卡方拟合优度检验显示研究结果：核心期刊在要素包含量上确实比非核心期刊要好，但是除了“目的”这个要素以外，两者在其它要素方面的差异并不显著。其次，无论是核心期刊还是非核心期刊，它们在引言这一要素方面的频数值都很低。另外，核心期刊除了“引言”这一要素的频数百分比低于70%外，其它要素均高于70%，而非核心期刊的“引言”和“目的”两个要素的百分比都远低于70%。对此，我们应该探究其原因以及改善措施。无论是核心期刊还是非核心期刊，大多数学者在规范论文摘要结构方面的意识都很薄弱。他们应该定期接受关于论文摘要结构方面的培训，这样他们才能对论文摘要要素有更好的了解。

关键词：质量 摘要 结构 期刊论文

1. Introduction

1.1 Background of the Research

Key journals, as the name implies, are of high academic levels while non-key journals are not. Nowadays, as more and more articles are published in academic journals, the article quality has attracted a lot of attention due to the phenomena that the good and bad are intermingled arises gradually.

The selection of the key journal articles has been argued by some researchers (e.g. Lu, 2009). The topic of their researches is the relation between language editing quality of academic journals and the selective conditions for key journals in China. Their researches report that the quality of the key journal articles is not assured, so they points out the urgency of enhancing the selective demands of the key journals.

Exactly like what Lu, (2009) suggests, among such a lot of theses, how can we judge the quality of a thesis? How can we make a judgment whether it should be classified into a key journal or a non-key journal? The abstract is the main content of a thesis and we can almost have a fundamental understanding about the quality of a thesis depending on its abstract.

In the last decade, there have been an increasing number of researches making a comparison on the structure between the abstracts of key journals and non-key journals (e.g.Tang, 2011), in order to standardize the writing level of students. In his article, the structure is summed up as five move-steps, including background, introduction, methodology, findings and discussions. According to the five move-steps, he does a research on the frequency- of-occurrence of them in the key and non-key journal articles. Under the guidance of his research, the university students may improve their academic writing.

Given the current condition of our academic journals, this article made a comparative analysis, based on the “five elements” of a thesis, focusing on the abstract. The five factors of the thesis include introduction, purpose, method, product and conclusion, which are similar to the five move-steps of the structure .

1.2 Purpose of the Research

The primary purpose of the study is to make a comparison between the abstracts of the key and non-key journal articles; that is, it aims to explore the differences between the abstract quality of the key and non-key journals. The research can make us realize whether the key journal articles have shortcomings in the abstract quality, then consider carefully how to improve the quality of them. Besides, we can know about the quality of the non-key journals and whether they deserve much attention and further development.

How do key and non-key journal articles compare in the quality of abstracts? This is the question which this article mainly researches.

This study selected 24 articles of key journals and 24 articles of non-key journals in the same year, then it made an analysis of the abstracts whether including the “five elements”. If it involved one element, then point “1”; if not, point “0”. Based on the collected data, SPSS was used to analyze the data with chi-square goodness of fit test.

1.3 Organization of the Research

This thesis consists of five chapters. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 reviews the previous researches and reviews some major findings of them. Chapter 3 depicts the methodological approach adopted in the study. The data collected according to 48 key and non-key journal articles will be identified and analyzed via the major research instrument-SPSS( chi-square goodness of fit test). The key findings from an analysis of the research data are presented in Chapter 4. In this chapter, the research results are discussed in association with the former studies. Chapter 5 summarizes the study findings and states its contributions to this research field. The reasons and suggestions will also be stated in this chapter.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Definition of the article abstract

The abstract is the key component of a thesis and it is a brief statement of an article. It provides the basic information from the article’s major sections-introduction, methods, results and discussion, the main function of which is to convey the central ideas and main contents.

The next is a better example of an abstract（Bitchener，2012）---

Willingness to communicate, an individual difference variable, in currently receiving an increasing amount of attention in the literature on second language learning. The present study has continued that focus by investigating whether WTC should be considered a trait-like variable, or whether it is more properly regarded as a situational variable. This distinction was drawn by Maclntyre et al. (1998). who posited that WTC in L2 possesses these dual characteristics, different from the trait-like WTC in L1. In essence, the consistency between learners’ self-report WTC and their actual WTC behavior in an L2 classroom setting was examined. The study also aimed to look at how WTC varied according to changes in the size of three classroom contexts which entailed both a special and temporal dimension -- whole class, small groups and dyads -- over a one-month period of a language course. A multi-method approach underpinned the study by enabling the construct to be looked at from different perspectives. This approach, involving the adoption of structured classroom observation, participant interviews and questionnaires, overcame the weakness of using self-report survey as a single instrument to examine the multidimensional willingness to communicate construct. Ten students, enrolled in a general English program at an Auckland language school, completed WTC questionnaires. Classroom observation of eight classes (sixteen hours) served as the primary tool to collect data. Follow-up interviews were then conducted with the participants. Findings from the study revealed that WTC in L2 was both a trait-like and a situational-based variable. The trait-level WTC could determine an individual’s general tendency in communication whereas state-level WTC predicted the decision to

initiate communication within a particular context. As a situational variable, WTC was found to be open to change our time. A number of factors that appeared to influence learners’ willingness to communicate behavior in three classroom contexts were identified as the number of interlocutor(s) in a particular context, familiarity with interlocutor(s), interlocutor(s)’ task performance, interest in topics under discussion in tasks, task types for pair/group work, whether L1 or L2 was used as medium of communication and participants’ cultural backgrounds. The results of the study contribute to an understanding of the dynamic nature of willingness to communicate in a second language. Practical suggestions for pedagogy and future research were also identified.

This abstract includes the introduction, purpose, method, product and conclusion parts. Sentence 1 introduces the content of the study and points out its importance. Sentence 2 to 4 begin the statement of the purpose. Sentence 5 to 10 present the specific aspects of the methodology related to the purpose of the study. Sentence 11 states the major findings and research results of the study. Sentence 12 makes a conclusion of the whole research,

On the contrary, a worse example is like this（Peng amp; Yuan，2015）---

This paper reviews domestic studies on the test of English listening. The s-urvey shows that. 1） in general, the studies mainly focuses on college student-s; 2）most researches focus on nationwide tests rather than regional or school-based tests ; 3） the major content of the study involves various aspects, but there is a lack of study aligned with English curriculum standard.

This abstract does not include any elements other than the research result.

The quality of the abstract nearly affects that of the whole article. How to write a good article abstract? How to compare the abstracts of two articles? A large number of people have done the relative researches on the abstract of an article.

2.2 Studies of the article abstract

Ai, (2007) publishes an article concerning the analysis on the key library periodicals from 2001 to 2005. He finds that the key periodicals are highly cited. The cause of this phenomenon is that in most people’s minds, the key periodicals represent the authority and the highest level. However, we can not ensure that the key periodicals are certainly more excellent than others.

The scholar(e.g. Lu, 2009 ) has done a research on the quality of the abstract of the key journal articles. He states the influence and scientificity of the key journals, so he presents the urgency of improving the limits of the selection of key journals.

Peter Hernon and Candy Schwartz, (2010) has published an article in regards to writing an abstract. They explain that the abstract summarizes the whole thesis and the readers can have a basic understanding of the thesis. On their opinions, the abstract should highlight the problem and discuss why readers need to care about it. Secondly, it also reviews the procedures, major findings, recommendations and conclusions. They believe a good abstract may attract the readers to read on.

Tichapondwa Modesto, (2009) has published an article named how to write an acceptable article. He makes a conclusion that without a tail, it is not a cat, that is without a good abstract, it is not a good article. He states his findings that writing an acceptable article needs some necessary elements.

What’s more, some scholars (e.g. Tang, 2011) have done some further researches on the abstract by comparing the key journals and non-key journals, focusing on the structure of the abstract. In Tang’s article, the structure is summed up as five move-steps, including background, introduction, methodology, findings and discussions. According to the five move-steps, he does a research on the frequency- of-occurrence of them in the key and non-key journal articles. He finds that the key journal articles are more precise than the non-key ones because the articles of the non-key journals are almost from the college students. He advises that they can use the key journal articles for reference.

Wu Ting (2015) has also made a comparative genre analysis of the structure of abstracts based on the five move-steps, but limiting on the primary research articles in applied linguistics. The result shows that these articles nearly all mention the move-step 1 while they pay little attention to the writing of move-step 4. She makes a summing-up that the learner should have a better understanding of the structure of abstract and strengthen the ability of writing an academic abstract.

Based on so many scholars’ studies, there is no doubt that the abstract plays a crucial part in an article. How to write a good and acceptable abstract? A large number of scholars have done the researches on the article abstracts. However, nearly no people have made a comparison on the quality from the abstracts of key journals and non-key journals concerning the elements of an article abstract. By comparing them, we can discover intuitively the differences and find the shortages of non-key journals. Furthermore, it will make a long effect on the development of the non-key journals.

3. Method

3.1 Research question

The purpose of this research is to make a comparison between the abstracts of the key and non-key journal articles; that is, it aims at exploring the differences between the quality of the abstract of key and non-key journals. The research can make us realize whether the key journal articles have shortcomings, and consider carefully how to improve the quality of them. Besides, we can know about the quality of the non-key journals and whether they deserve more attention and further development.

3.2 Research design

This study adopted a quantitative analysis method to investigate the differences between the abstracts of key and non-key journal articles.

The comparison was based on the “five elements” of an article. The five factors of the thesis include introduction, purpose, method, product and conclusion. The first part mainly refers to the following elements—provide context, background of the research; identify the motivation for the research; explain the significance of the research focus; identify a research gap or continuation of the research focus. The second part nearly contains identifying aims or intentions, questions or hypotheses, developing aims or intentions, questions or hypotheses. The third part mainly includes identifying overall approach and methods, identifying key aspects; identifying data sources and analysis processes. The forth part needs to present main findings. The last part should suggest the importance of findings beyond the research, considering contributions to theory and suggest application for practice and implications for further research.

Then 48 articles were chosen from key and non-key journals and were analyzed if they involved the “five elements”. See Appendix for the information about these articles. Chi-square goodness of fit test was used to investigate whether the key and non-key journal articles have significant differences.

3.3 Data collection and analysis procedures

This study selected 24 article abstracts from key journals and 24 article abstracts from non-key journals published in the same year. The articles are picked out at random from VIP(维普资讯中文服务平台). The reason for selecting the articles published in the same year was that the year of the articles needed to be limited because selecting the articles in different years might result in the inaccuracy of the data, and affect the reliability and the validity of the research. For example, provided the key journal articles in 2015 were chosen while the non-key ones published in 2010 were selected. How could we ensure that the publication year could not affect the article quality? As time goes on, the quality of the journals may have some changes. Therefore, the articles must be selected from the journals published in the same year.

The 24 key journal articles published in 2015 were picked out from 4 key journals, including Modern Foreign Languages, Foreign Language and Their Teaching, Foreign Language World, Journal of Foreign Languages, which are published in 2015. The 24 non-key journal articles published in 2015 were selected from 4 non-key journals, Jiangsu Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Journal of Tianjin Foreign Studies University, Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, Foreign Language Testing and Teaching included.

An analysis of the 48 abstracts was made to figure out whether they included the “five elements”. Let us make an example (Li amp; Wang, 2015).

E.g. With natural and synthesized perception materials, this study investigates among four groups of listeners the influences of linguistic experience (native language and teaching experience) on perception of degrees of foreign accent in English produced by Chinese EFL learners. The results show that the listeners’ native language has significant influences on degrees of perceived foreign accent in the Chinese EFL speech. The native English listeners are significantly more sensitive to foreign accent than the native Chinese listeners. The influences of teaching experience depend on the listeners’ native language. It has no significant influence on the native English listeners. As to the native Chinese listeners, their perception of the slight foreign accent exhibits no significant difference, but the Chinese teachers are significantly more sensitive to the heavy foreign accent than the Chinese students. The results are of certain implications for pronunciation assessor selection and pronunciation instruction.

Specifically, the first sentence of this abstract mentions the method of the research; the second to sixth sentences state the product of the research and the last sentence is the conclusion. However, this abstract lacks the introduction part and it does not express clearly the purpose of the research.

The 6 articles of Modern Foreign Languages all mentioned the method and conclusion parts but just 5 articles involved the other elements. The 6 articles of Foreign Language and Their Teaching all mentioned the introduction part but just 5 articles involved the other elements. The 6 articles of Foreign Language World all mentioned the introduction and method parts but just 5 articles involved the other elements. The 6 articles of Journal of Foreign Languages all mentioned the product part but just 5 articles involved the introduction and purpose parts; 4 articles involved the method part and 3 articles involved the conclusion part.

The 6 articles of Jiangsu Foreign Language Teaching and Research all referred to the conclusion part; however, only 5 articles included the introduction and purpose parts; 4 articles included the method and product parts. Only 5 articles of Journal of Tianjin Foreign Studies University all referred to the introduction, product and conclusion parts; 4 articles included the purpose and method parts. The 6 articles of Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies all referred to the introduction, method and product parts; however, only 5 articles included the purpose; 4 articles included the conclusion part. The 6 articles of Foreign Language Testing and Teaching all referred to the introduction, purpose and product parts; however, only 5 articles included the method part; 4 articles included the conclusion part.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Results

The author marked the presence of absence of each abstract element in each journal article. “1”stood for the presence of an abstract element, while “0” stood for the absence of an abstract element. Table 4.1 reports the frequency counts of each element in the key and non-key journal article abstracts. Table 4.2 reports the percentage of each element in the key and non- key journal article abstracts.

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