WRITING CRITERIA AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS FEATURES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS (ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS)

Abstract

The article examines not only the issue of determining the list of criteria for successful writing of conference abstracts, but also views the ability to carry out a linguistic analysis of conference abstracts to ensure the development of academic writing skills. It outlines the meaning of key concepts, abstracts, and conference abstracts, known as secondary genres of scientific discourse. The article describes textual characteristics and application of rhetorical strategies in writing effective conference abstracts. The methods of content analysis and systematization have been used to determine linguistic features of the analyzed conference abstracts. Moreover, it claims on the importance of considering the established conventions of their meaningful writing not only for post-graduate students but for young scholars as well, since it is a common problem for all groups. Failing to meet the requirements, conference abstracts are to be denied by the committee board hosting the future scientific conference. Addressing this problem, experts of blind viewing suggest that it may be attributed to poor command of English, lack of knowledge of academic writing skills and of lexical and stylistic features. The results suggest that familiarizing students with the recent scientific data and methodology is crucial but not sufficient to develop their academic writing skills. Implementing the method of content analysis, the study places emphasis on examining various authentic scientific texts. Thus, the conclusion has been made about the significance of following the accepted format of writing conference abstracts and maintaining appropriate rhetoric strategies in the development of academic writing skills. Among the analyzed materials of the English-language conference abstracts, the most typical linguistic characteristics of this type of genre of academic writing were established: the use of Active Voice constructions, mainly verbs of the present indefinite tense, impersonal constructions, personal, possessive, and indicative pronouns in plural form which act as the subject, abbreviations and negative sentences are rarely used.