Plenary Talks
The Vocabulary and Style ofEngineering Research Abstract
Writing
Matthew T. Apple
Ritsumeikan University
Students in the Advanced Faculty of Engineering (senkoka) at colleges of technology(kosen) are required to write their graduation thesis abstracts in English; likewise, they areencouraged by their advisors to submit English research abstracts to overseas conferences
to present their research. However, although many senkoka students have a large English
vocabulary, they are often unaware of writing styles and phrases used in research paper andpresentation abstracts by particular engineering fields. In this paper, I will share findings
from a pilot study that investigated the vocabulary levels and writing styles of abstracts
written by senkoka students at one kosen compared with that of online engineering research
abstracts from IEEE conferences. Results showed that students knew many difficult, lowfrequency words but experienced a gap in vocabulary knowledge among easier, higher
frequency words. On the other hand, online published presentation abstracts relied more onhigh frequency words with a steady decrease in low frequency technical vocabulary. When
online abstracts were analyzed based on a division of engineering disciplines into the threefields of chemical engineering, electronics and information engineering, and mechanicalengineering, field-specific writing patterns were discovered in the structure of the abstracts.

Introduction“What does an abstract look like?” may seem like an innocuous question to theaverage English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher; however, abstract writing
can indeed prove a challenge to novice writers working in a foreign language.
Typical EFL writing classes for university-level students focus on paragraphwriting, starting with the topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding
sentence. However, the abstract may not necessarily follow the same paragraph86Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

rhetorical pattern. How, then, should one teach abstract writing to EFL students?
One possible solution is to focus on the kind of abstract writing expected of the
EFL students by the target academic discipline. In other words, focus on genericcharacteristics (Swales, 1990) in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context
may prove most salient for EFL instructors.
The student population in the present study was a group of second year
senkoka (advanced faculty of engineering) students studying a combination of
mechanical and systems engineering at a college of technology (kosen) in central
Japan. Senkoka students are required to write engineering research abstracts, but
not the entire graduation thesis, in English, as part of their bachelor’s degree
graduation requirement. Although second year senkoka students are roughly thesame age (e.g., 21-22 years old) as typical fourth year undergraduates, senkoka
students are capable of graduate-level research due to the specialized coursework
required at the kosen. Senkoka students are also encouraged to accompany theirresearch advisors on overseas research trips and often present their research atoverseas conferences in English, usually as an individual poster presentation.
Thus, senkoka students are asked by their advisors to write research abstracts in
English for this purpose.
Previous research (Apple, 2012) found that senkoka students typically knew
roughly 70% of the first 3000 words of English and had an average overall
English vocabulary of approximately 8000 words. However, students generally
knew more low-frequency vocabulary words that occur at the 7000- to 8000word level than relatively higher frequency words at the 4000- to 5000-wordlevel. Whether this sudden increase in low-frequency word knowledge aroundthe 8000-word level would help or hinder the writing of engineering abstracts
for international engineering conferences was unknown. The purpose of thisstudy was therefore to examine not only the style of abstracts senkoka students
might be expected to write for an overseas conference, but also the degree towhich their vocabulary knowledge matched that needed for such abstracts.

87AppleAcademic Abstract Writing Models
A general academic abstract style based on analysis of journal abstract writing
instructions was suggested by Borko and Chatman (1963). This has led to theconception of two basic types of abstracts: informative and descriptive.2 The
descriptive abstract works as a brief summary without mentioning specificresults: science and engineering students are cautioned to “actively avoid”
using it (Silyn-Roberts, 2013, p. 56). Informative abstracts, on the other hand,
typically include a brief explanation of the reason for the study, the problem thestudy addresses, the method used to collect data, the results or observations, andimplications or recommends for the future (The Writing Center, 2012). This
Table 1A Comparison of the Moves in the IMRD Model and the CARS Model
Move

IMRD

CARS

1

Introduction

Establishing the territory

1aClaiming centrality, and/or

1b

Placing your research within the field, and/or

1c

Reviewing previous research

2

Methods

Establishing a niche

2aCounter-claiming, or

2b

Indicating a gap in previous research, or

2cQuestion-raising, or

2dContinuing a tradition

3

Results

Occupying the nice3a-1

Outlining the purpose, or

3a-2

Announcing present research

3bAnnouncing principle findings

3c

Indicating article research structure

4

Discussion

88Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

style corresponds to the style generally used for scientific papers, the well-known
introduction, method, results, and discussion model (IMRD).
Abstract writing may also follow a different model known as “create a
research space” or “CARS” model, which was originally posited to represent awell-written academic paper introduction section (Swales, 1990; Swales & Feak,2001). The CARS model comprises three main segments, or “moves,” each ofwhich may consist of several separate steps. The moves of CARS are usuallylabeled “Establishing research territory,” “Establishing a niche,” and “Presenting
present research.” Unlike the IMRD model, CARS virtually ignores researchmethodology and discussion of the significance of the findings, focusing insteadon the importance of the study in the context of the specific research field or
discipline (Table 1). Previous studies (e.g., Lores, 2004) have discovered the useof both the IMRD model and the CARS model in humanities and social scienceabstracts.
Science and Engineering Abstract Analyses
The few extent papers regarding genre analysis of science and engineering
abstracts have typically been carried out to determine the degree to which theabstracts fit a pre-determined structure. For example, about half the medical
journal abstracts analyzed in one study were deemed “well-structured,” anddeviations from the expected IMRD norm were labeled “discoursal flaws”(Salager-Meyer, 1990/2009). Partially as a result of such analysis, medical
research journals introduced the so-called “structured abstract,” which forced
authors to use IMRD-style subsections and headings in abstracts (Hartley, 2004).
In fact, science and engineering researchers are generally advised to conformto the IMRD model for abstracts, and for the paper as a whole. Engineeringresearchers who seek publication by the largest academic society in the world,
the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), have been advised toinclude five sections in their paper abstracts: (a) context, (b) problem addressed,(c) methods, (d) results, and (e) conclusion (Pierson & Pierson, 1997, p. 303).
These five sections roughly correspond to the traditional IMRD structure of a
research paper.
89

AppleOn the other hand, science and engineering university students in North
America have been given conflicting advice. For example, computer software
engineers studying at Carnegie Mellon University have been advised toconsider: (a) motivation for the work, (b) problem to be solved, (c) approachof the research, (d) results of the study, and (e) conclusions, implications,and generalizability (Koopman, 1997). Meanwhile, students majoring inastrophysics and mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteare told to include: (a) objective, (b) methods, (c) results, and (d) conclusions,but not to include a literature review. Indeed, students are advised to avoid any
reference whatsoever to previous research studies and to highlight the objectives
and results of their own studies. This last piece of advice even suggests that thevery first sentence of the abstract should start with the phrase “This paper” or“This study” (The Center for Communication Practices, n.d.).
However, the question of the extent to which professional engineering
abstracts actually follow the above recommendations remains. While studies ofsecond language (L2) academic abstracts are plentiful, such studies have typicallyfocused on specific language, such as evaluative speech acts, subjective language,
and personal judgments (Stotesbury, 2003); verb usage (Salager-Meyer, 1992),
and relative pronoun clauses used to signal authorial stance (Hyland & Tse,2005). The present study focuses specifically on engineering abstracts written forengineering conferences, to which senkoka students from Japanese kosen typically
apply in the hopes of presenting their research to an international audience. The
paper intends to answer the following questions:
1. Do Japanese senkoka students possess adequate vocabulary to produce
professional engineering conference abstracts?
2. What, if any, stylistic differences exist among abstracts in the three
disciplines of engineering related to the senkoka students’ programs ofstudy?

90

Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

Methods
Data Collection
Data collected for this study came from two sources: senkoka students and online
abstracts from engineering conferences.
Student data. The study comprised 15 senkoka students (all male)3 in their final
year of the two-year senkoka program at a kosen in central Japan. All 15 students
had studied English and were taking Presentation in English, an elective skillsbased course that focused on engineering presentation design and practice. The
instructor (the researcher in this study) had previously taught the same students
in two previous years of the main five-year program of the same kosen. The
average combined TOEIC score of students was 535, with a low score of 400
and a high score of 755. Thirteen of the students were enrolled in the advanced
mechanical engineering program, which combined aspects of mechanical designand systems control engineering. Two were enrolled in the advanced electronic
and information engineering program, which combined aspects of electricalsystems, electronic design, and computer programming. Two mechanicalengineering students gave permission for their abstracts to be analyzed for thisstudy.
Selecting engineering abstracts. For the purposes of this paper, the first step was
to identify abstracts that were written by researchers in approximately the sameengineering disciplines as the senkoka students. From the online proceedingsof eight conferences held in 2010 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), 139 abstracts were selected at random. The abstracts were
written by researchers based in 34 different countries and were freely available
through the IEEE Explore web site (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/). Because thesenkoka at the kosen in the study was divided into three main study disciplinesof chemical engineering (C), electronic and information engineering (EI), andmechanical engineering (MS), only abstracts related to those three disciplines
were selected. There were a total of 40 chemical engineering abstracts, 50
electronic and information abstracts, and 49 mechanical engineering abstracts.

91AppleAnalysis Used
The data were analyzed in two ways. The first analysis compared the vocabulary
size of the 15 senkoka students to the vocabulary frequency levels present in the
139 abstracts. A genre analysis was then used to examine the structure of theabstracts.
Vocabulary analysis. Vocabulary levels were measured in two ways. Student
levels of vocabulary knowledge were measured by implementing the original
Vocabulary Size Test (VST, Beglar & Nation, 2007). The VST comprises 14
levels of vocabulary knowledge based on the British National Corpus (BNC)
and is available as a free download (http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/
publications/paul-nation/Vocabulary-Size-Test-14000.pdf ).
Vocabulary from the online conference abstracts in this study was examinedusing the AntWord profiler program and the AntConc concordancer program(Anthony, 2012). Both programs are available as free downloads and previously
have been tested for use by engineering students (Anthony, 2005). The AntWord
profiler listed the most frequently used vocabulary items in abstracts from each of
the three engineering disciplines as well as that of all three disciplines combined.
The AntConc program listed collocations of input vocabulary items as well as
identified the location of the vocabulary within the abstracts. Abstracts fromtwo students provided a representative sample of the work of the 15 students inthe English presentation class; these were analyzed using the AntWord profiler
program. The vocabulary from online abstracts and student abstracts was thencompared to identify differences in vocabulary usage.
Abstract style analysis. In order to determine the basic structure of engineering
abstracts, a specific word was chosen as a starting point to identify the “moves”
within the abstracts. The word “paper” was chosen and input into the AntConc
program in order to determine the location of the word within the abstract.
Phrases including the word “paper,” such as “This paper” and “The present
paper,” were taken as an indicator of the move “purpose” or “objective.” Using the“purpose” move as a starting point, the moves of the abstracts were identified andcategorized as either following the IMRD model or the CARS model.

92Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

Results
Vocabulary Analysis
First, the vocabulary size of the students was examined using the VST. On
average students knew approximately 8,200 words in English. Words known
per level were plotted (Figure 1). Results indicated that the students’ vocabularyknowledge decreased steadily as the frequency level of words decreased; however,a sudden uptick at the 7,000- and 8,000-word levels suggested that students
knew more 7,000- and 8,000-level words than 5,000- and 6,000-level words.
In other words, senkoka students tended to know more low-frequency, difficult
vocabulary words than more frequent, less difficult vocabulary words.
Next, the 139 abstracts were examined for vocabulary levels using AntWord
Profiler, which compared the vocabulary present in the abstracts to the first 12
levels of the British National Corpus (BNC). The combined total number oftokens for all abstracts was 19,199, with a type/token ratio of .20. The average
number of words per abstract was k = 139; C abstracts averaged more words (k =Figure 1. Average number of words known per level of the Vocabulary Size Test by senkoka
students. (N = 15). Estimated levels are on the x-axis, and estimated words are on the y-axis.

93Apple162) than MS (k = 129) and EI (k = 128) abstracts. Analysis indicated that the
top 12,000 words of the BNC covered 93.1% of the vocabulary levels of words
used in the 139 abstracts (Table 2). EI abstracts had the highest level of coverage(95.5%) and C abstracts the lowest (90.6%).
To compare senkoka students’ abstract writing to the IEEE online conference
proceedings abstracts, the two sample abstracts from MS students were input
into the AntWord Profiler. Both abstracts had been accepted by international
engineering conferences. Results indicated that the 12,000 words of the BNC
covered 93.6% of the first sample and 95.1% of the second sample (Table 3).
The overall vocabulary coverage percentages of the MS students’ abstracts
were comparable to that of the MS online proceedings abstracts; however, thepercentages of 2,000-, 7,000-, and 8,000-level words in the student abstracts
were greater than the percentages of the same levels in the online MS abstracts.
Genre Analysis
The word paper was chosen as the starting point for identifying moves in the 139
abstracts. Interestingly, paper was found in only five of the 40 C abstracts; instead,the word study was found in 22 abstracts. Because the 15 senkoka students who
Table 2
Coverage of BNC 1,000-12,000 Levels in Select Engineering Conference Proceedings Abstracts
Abstract

1k

2k

3k

4k

5k

6k

7k

8k

9k

10k 11k 12k Total

Combined

65.1 12.5 4.0

3.6

2.5

1.2

.7

1.1

.8

.9

.4

.3

93.1

Chemical61.5 11.8 4.1

3.9

2.8

1.2

.9

1.1

1.2

1.0

.5

.6

90.6

EI

69.4 13.3 3.7

3.0

1.8

.9

.7

1.1

.3

.9

.5

.1

95.5

MS

64.3 12.5 4.2

3.9

2.8

1.4

.7

1.3

.8

.7

.2

.3

93.2

Notes. Total of 139 abstracts; combined word count was 19,199 tokens.
Table 3Coverage of BNC 1,000-12,000 Levels in Two Sample Student Abstracts
Abstract

1k

2k

3k

4k

5k

6k

7k

8k

9k

10k 11k 12k Total

Sample 1

68.7 17.4 2.0

.5

.5

1.0

1.0

2.0

0.5

0

0

0

93.6

Sample 2

61.3 21.1 5.6

1.4

.7

0

0

4.9

0

0

0

0

95.1

94

Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

supplied data to the present study belonged to the EI and MS programs, the C
abstracts were not analyzed for moves and instead the EI and MS abstracts were
subjected to genre analysis, making the total number of abstracts for this sectionn = 99. The EI and MS abstracts were input separately into AntConc and theconcordance plots for paper were examined. The word paper occurred in 68%
of the 50 EI abstracts (n = 34) and 71% of the 49 MS abstracts (n = 35). In theinterests of space, a truncated screenshot of only the MS abstract concordance
output is presented here as example AntConc concordance plot output (Figure2). The abstracts were then analyzed using the location of the word paper as abasis for identifying the objective move of the 69 EI and MS abstracts in which
the word occurred.
In the 34 EI abstracts that used paper, three clear patterns emerged. Twenty
abstracts followed a pattern of moves similar to the IMRD model: (a) explain
the problem through reference to prior studies, (b) suggest a possible solution,(c) establish the objective of the paper, (d) describe methods and materials,
and (e) summarize findings. Four of the abstracts followed a pattern similar
to CARS: (a) introduce the field of inquiry, (b) explain the problem and its
relevance, (c) discuss possible solutions, and (d) establish the objective of thepaper. The CARS-like pattern of moves was used primarily in discussion papers
that provided little or no empirical data. Ten of the abstracts followed neither of
the two expected models. Instead, they tended to repeat the objective and focus
on methodology: (a) establish the objective of the paper, (b) explain an existing
method of research, (c) highlight problems with existing methods, (d) propose a
new method to improve on the existing method, and (e) repeating the objectiveof the paper, occasionally with a brief summary of findings. The pattern of moves
for these ten abstracts resembles the “Establishing a niche” and “Occupying
the niche” steps of the CARS model; however, the focus on objective in thefirst move, even before placing the study within the field of inquiry, breaks thepattern.
The 35 MS abstracts that used paper had an even more pronounced patternof moves. Twelve of the abstracts followed the IMRD model closely: (a)establish recent trends of inquiry, (b) highlight problems with existing methods,
95

AppleFigure 2. A concordance plot output from the AntConc program of the word “paper” (n = 41) in
35 select mechanical and system engineering abstracts. The vertical line indicates the approximate
location of “paper” in the abstracts.

96Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102(c) introduce a new method to be demonstrated, (d) describe methods andmaterials, (e) present findings. However, twenty-three of the abstracts followed
what could be called an “inverted CARS” model: (a) establish the objective of
the paper, (b) describe methods and materials, and (c) explain the benefits ofthe proposed method over existing methods. In most of the “inverted CARS”
abstracts, no findings were presented. Two of the 21 abstracts following thispattern of moves repeated the objective of the paper in the final sentence, andone of them repeated the objective three times throughout the abstract. The
phrase “The paper,” “The present paper,” or “This paper” appeared in the first
sentence of twenty abstracts.
Because the senkoka students in the study were primarily MS students, afurther analysis was done for author voice. In contrast to both C and EI abstracts,
which relied entirely on the passive (V + ed) construction, the MS abstracts
relied heavily on the active voice. In fact, the pronoun we appeared 25 times in
19 abstracts; two abstracts used we four times. We occurred most frequently inthe description of methods and materials. The use of the authorial voice is thus
quite distinct in the abstracts of different engineering disciplines.

Discussion
The first question of the study, whether senkoka students have adequate lexical
knowledge to write abstracts for international engineering conferences, wasanswered in the affirmative. The students in the study clearly possessed adequate
knowledge of English vocabulary to write an appropriate abstract in theirrespective disciplines. A problem, however, was suggested by the analysis of thetwo sample student-written abstracts. While the overall vocabulary levels of theabstracts matched that of online conference proceeding abstracts, the studentproduced abstracts contained more 7,000- to 8,000-level words and fewer
3,000- to 6,000-level words than the online conference proceedings abstracts.
I will hazard an educated guess that much of the discipline-specific technicalvocabulary known to students occurs starts at roughly the 7,000-word level. The
senkoka students had all progressed through the kosen system, in which juniorhigh school graduates attend five years in an engineering program designed to97

Appletrain specialists in a specific discipline. Though the senkoka students had a firm
grasp of the basic 2,000 words of English, they did not have as much knowledgeof the next three levels (i.e., 3,000- to 5,000-word levels) of English vocabulary.
This finding supports previous studies indicating a dearth of vocabulary items
in junior and senior high school text books in Japan (Chujo, 2004, 2007).
While senkoka students in this study had knowledge of low-frequency, technicalEnglish vocabulary specific to their engineering disciplines, the gap in English
vocabulary knowledge may result in senkoka students’ English presentation
abstracts being more lexically dense than typical engineering abstracts.
The genre analysis of the online engineering conference abstracts provided
the answer to the second research question: there were, indeed, differences inabstract styles, both within and among disciplines. Overall, the style of EI
abstracts most closely followed the IMRD model, while MS mostly matched
CARS. However, a significant number of abstracts in both disciplines blurredmodel boundaries. This was especially common in the MS abstracts, in which
the focus on the objective of the paper even prior to situating the study in thefield of inquiry was outside either of the expected two models of abstract writing.
On the other hand, the pattern of moves for what could be termed an“OMBu Model” (objective, methods, benefits) does match the explicit directions
given by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a major engineering institute in theUS:
Rephrase the first sentence so that it starts off with the new information
contained in the paper, rather than with the general topic. One way of doing
this is to begin the first sentence with the phrase ‘this paper’ or ‘this study.’(The Center for Communication Practices, n.d., “How do you write an
abstract?”).
Despite the lack of corroborating evidence, it seems likely that the use of theinverted CARS pattern in MS abstracts had been explicitly taught to mechanicalengineering students. The rejection of the importance of the “gap” in the previous
literature and the immediacy of the focus on the objective of the present study98Style of Engineering Research Abstracts, OnCUE Journal, 7(2), pages 86-102

are not expected by either the IMRD or CARS model. Given the frequency
with which this inverted objective-centered pattern was evident in engineering
abstracts, instructors teaching engineers how to write abstracts in English may
wish to set aside established notions of what constitutes an abstract and examine
instead the generic conventions most commonly found within documents from
specific engineering discipline of their students. The style and moves of abstract
writing need to be approached from an ESP, or academic discipline-specificperspective, rather than from a more generic “English for academic purposes”
humanities point of view.

Conclusion
This study is an initial attempt to examine engineering abstracts produced by
Japanese kosen students. While a number of interesting points have been raised,
mitigating factors may make it difficult to generalize the study results. The
number of participating engineering students was small (n = 15); vocabularylevels and abstract data from a larger student sample may show different results.
The corpus of engineering abstracts was also moderately small (n = 139; k =19,199 tokens), taken from a single year of online conference proceedings.
Expanding the number of abstracts taken from proceedings from several different
years may result in different patterns of abstract writing. Finally, abstracts
examined in this paper were from conference proceedings papers; abstracts fromengineering journals may show different characteristics. Nevertheless, this study
represents a first attempt at examining engineering abstracts as they actually are,rather than as writing instructors assume they are or think they ought to be.

Notes
1. Portions of this paper were previously presented on September 7, 2013, at
the JALT CUE ESP Symposium, Japan Advanced Institute of Science andTechnology ( JAIST), Kanazawa, Japan.
2. The “structured” abstract, which divides the abstract into several subsections,each with a heading (e.g., Background, Aims, Method), has been proposed
as a third type of abstract (see Hartley, 2004). However, I consider this to99

Applebe a variation of the informative abstract, as the structured abstract simply
requires the IMRD sections to have headings.
3. A total of 21 students were enrolled in the Presentation in English course,
including three students of advanced chemical engineering. However, six
students declined to join the study, leaving n = 15. None of the advanced
chemical engineering students provided data.

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Author’s bio
Matthew Apple, MFA (University of Notre Dame), M.Ed., Ed. D. (Temple
University), is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication,
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. For the past fifteen years in Japan, he hastaught at various levels of education, including secondary, tertiary, and graduate.
mapple@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp
Received: October 1, 2013
Accepted: February 18, 2014102