(i) The main task or objective of your research (this is to let the readers know WHAT your research is about)
(ii) Reason or motivation for cartying out the research (this is to let the readers know WHY your research is carried out) (Hi) Steps or procedures taken to implement the main research task or objective (this is to let the readers know HOW
exactly the research is carried out)
(iv) The conclusion or thesis statement reached based on the steps you took to implement the main research task or objective (this is to let the readers know WHAT IS FOUND in your research)
To help the students put the four elements together, several templates were designed as presentation options demonstrating how the elements could be arranged. For example, here is a template for writing an abstract of a science paper.
Template for writing a science paper abstract
{Motivation} Many studies on .... have demonstrated .... But there is a problem .... {Main task} In this study/research, we investigated ... {Procedures &Results} In particular, firstly we conducted an experiment on ... Then we compared the results from the experiment with ... Finally we conducted another experiment on ... {Conclusion} Based on the results we found in ... we can conclude that ... {Implication} [optional] One important implication of our conclusion is that...
Using the template, the technicality of compiling an abstract becomes rather straightforward. All a student needs to do is to fill in the blanks and replace the suggested sentence or vocabularies with their own. And of course, the order of the elements can also be changed if a student sees fit.
Whether an abstract is of a high quality or not is not determined by the way the elements are put together. Among the abstracts submitted for reviews, the competition is not fought at the level of styles, formats, or other linguistic presentations. Anyone who follows the template can easily compile an abstract! The competition is ultimately fought at the level of clarity and convincingness of the research advertised.
For the reason of clarity, most of the writing specialists (e.g. Hartley, J. 2008, p. 31) would advise that an abstract should be the last thing to write in a paper, after all the research results have been collected and confirmed. However, an abstract should not be just a summary of the results achieved. Such kind of abstracts would be what Belcher regards as the “data-driven” abstracts. They are unintelligible and should be avoided (Belcher 2009, p. 86-89). To make an abstract intelligible, the results presented in it should form an argument. Data must be subordinated to an argument (Ibid., p. 88).
If an argument takes precedence over data in an abstract, then the summary is more about the ideas than results. In this sense, there is no reason why an abstract cannot be written first. Just like having a thesis statement in the earliest stage of writing, having an abstract before writing the paper body can bring about a more effective and efficient writing. What one can do is to have a preliminary abstract with unfixed research results.