Move Analysis of Senior High School Research Abstracts in a Philippine University

Abstract

A well-written abstract speaks for the paper’s quality—it reflects an article’s value. Research is a relatively new discipline for senior high school learners, thus, the writing of an abstract can be problematic and challenging. Anchored on Hyland’s model of research article abstracts as adapted by Behnam and Golpour (2014), this paper presents a move analysis of thirty (30) randomly-selected research abstracts of Grade 12 senior high school students in a Philippine University. The results revealed the three (3) dominant moves in the corpus of research abstracts namely Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product, Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion, and Introduction-Product-Method. It was also noted that the “Conclusion” move is less frequently observed and considered “optional”. Additionally, instances of move embedding were prominent between the Purpose and Method move. It was recommended that research instructors in the senior high school shall consider using models in teaching the writing of the abstract. The findings of this study may serve as a basis in crafting a genre-based research syllabus, with genre-based tasks.