English Department students' thesis abstract's structure and lexico-grammatical features

A thesis abstract need to be written after the thesis is finished. Thesis abstract is very helpful for readers to quickly understand general information about the thesis. Bhatia (1993), Koopman (1997), and Halliday (2000) states that an abstract should contain 5 parts which are: the motivation, purpose, method, result, and conclusion. For English Department students, besides having to write their thesis abstracts with the 5 parts of structure of abstract, they also have to write their thesis abstracts in English. Therefore, the writer aimed to investigate the structure and the lexico-grammatical features of English Department students’ thesis abstract. This study analyzes whether the thesis abstracts of the English Department have already contained the motivation, purpose, method, result, and conclusion of the study. This study found that only 13 out of 28 thesis abstracts that have already contained the motivation, purpose, method, result, and conclusion while the other 15 missed one or two parts. For the lexico-grammatical features, this study analyzed the lexical density, most frequent lexical items, modals, and passive voices using a Python program named Natural Language Tool Kit. It was found that there were 16 out of 28 thesis abstracts containing the five parts of abstracts’ structure and the rest missed one or two parts. The average lexical density from the thesis abstracts was 8.09 which can be concluded as complex enough as Halliday (1993) states that a text is complex if the lexical density is 10 or above. The most frequent lexical item which occurred in the thesis abstracts was noun, since an abstract contains much information, it was expected that noun would appear the most frequently. It was also found that the thesis abstract did not use modals and passive form frequently. Overall, the quality of the students’ abstracts cannot be judged only by looking at one aspect only. In making a thesis abstract, the students need to understand the structure of abstract and for English Department students, they need to use the appropriate vocabulary and correct use of grammar