Types and structures of thesis abstracts written by the English Department students of Widya Mandala Catholic University

The whole part of the thesis is gathered and summarized in a very simple composition called abstract. Abstract contains all the information included in the thesis, to help the reader decide whether to read the entire report or not. There are two types of abstract; (1) Descriptive abstract, which contains only the outline of the whole thesis; (2) Informative abstract, which contains the further information of a thesis including the result and the conclusion. Besides, the other important thing to consider in writing an abstract is the generic structure. A good structure of an abstract consists of (1) B (Background) = some background information related to the study, (2) P (Purpose) = the principle activity (or purpose) of the study and its scope, (3) M (Methodology) = some information about the methodology used in the study, (4) R (Result) = the most important results of the study, and (5) C (Conclusion) = a statement of conclusion or recommendation of the study (Weissberg and Buker 1990: 186). The writer observed that there have been no studies about thesis abstracts done by the English department students of Widya Mandala catholic University. Therefore, the writer conducted this study to investigate (1) the types of thesis abstracts written by the students and (2) the generic structures of thesis abstracts written by the students. In this study, the writer collected twenty theses of the English Department students year 1996 to 2006, and copied the abstracts to be the source of the study. The abstracts then analyzed based on the theories of types of abstract and generic structures of abstract. The results show that (1) the students use the Informative types of abstract; (2) There is only one abstract which is appropriate to the requirement of a good abstract stated by Weissberg and Buker (1990:186). Considering the results above, it can be concluded that the English Department Students of Widya Mandala Catholic University use the informative type of abstract and there are only one abstract which is appropriate to the requirement of a good abstract. This study only deals with the types of abstract and the generic structures of abstract. Therefore, the writer suggests next researchers to develop a study about thesis abstract deals with the language used and the phrases found in the abstracts. Besides, the writer also suggest the English Department to develop materials concerning the types of abstract and the generic structures of abstract and provide it in the academic writing classes