Page 260 - English for Writing Research Papers

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13.28 How do I write an abstract for an informal talk,

workshop or seminar at an international conference?
Abstracts for the various workshops and seminars held at conferences tend to be a
little more informal. The abstract is likely to include the following:

• brief statement of what the speaker intends to say during his / her session
• background or problem

• progress made

The informality means that personal pronouns ( we, I ) are often (but not always) found,
plus active verbs. In the examples below (which like all the examples in this subsec-
tion are fictitious) S1 and S3 are written in an informal way, S2 and S4 are formal.

S1. In this talk I provide a brief overview of the results of a survey on whether a nation's sense
of humour can be revealed by observing posts and feedback on Facebook. I will be look-
ing in particular at …
S2. This talk will look at the process of analysing the principle sources of spam (on a country-
by-country basis) and our team's experiences in analysing the various types of spam. The
main focus will be bogus health services (particularly for men), requests for bank details,
prize winners, and fictitious journal and editing services.

S3. In our research we are trying to understand why so few people ever try to question the
opinions that they have held for years – are they blinkered or blonkered? [blinkered: with
a narrow outlook on life; blonkered: heavily intoxicated with alcohol]
S4. The LANGRYNX project seeks to understand why the position of the larynx does not
explain why bilingual people will speak in a lower tone in one language (e.g. Italian) but
a higher tone in another language (e.g. English).

Some authors try to make their Abstract more appealing by using bullets. For example:

The talk will:

• explain the method of calculating the relative chances of a 25-year-old male
becoming an Olympic athlete or the winner of a national talent show
• report on experiences of our previous probability studies comparing the chances of

publishing one's first work of fiction (approximately 1 in 1,000,000) and playing a
sport for one's nation (from 1 in 1000 in some countries, to 1 in 500,000 in others)
• demonstrate that most people erroneously associate a higher level of diffi culty with
becoming a top team athlete than succeeding in the world of music or literature

Note that for consistency each of the bullets begins with the same type of word (in

this case the verb in its bare infinitive form) – see G 25.13 in English for Research:
Grammar, Usage and Style.