The roles of abstracts are evident not only in terms of information retrieval but also in
terms of publication success, determining the acceptance/rejection for publication (Huckin 2001). Scholars thus find the task of writing abstracts quite daunting and challenging. For
non-English speaking scholars or inexperienced learners of English, especially in Southeast
Asia, the abstract writing task is much more intimidating. In addition to the disciplinary
content to be presented in the abstract, novice non-English speaking scholars particularly
need to possess two additional bodies of knowledge in writing successful abstracts in
English: structural organisation and linguistic features. To elaborate, primarily, they need to
know the overall organisation commonly followed in this particular genre of their respective
academic disciplines. Moreover, they need to be able to choose appropriate lexical and
grammatical features to make their abstracts accessible and understandable by their target
discourse community members.