PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA

MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY OF IBN KHALDOUN – TIARET
FACULTY OF LETTERS AND LANGUAGES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

How to Write APA Abstract

What is an Abstract?

The abstract needs to provide specific information from your research (dissertation,

thesis, article...etc). It must be brief and comprehensive at the same time. According to APA

7th edition (2020) the abstract ‘provides an overview of the paper and helps readers decide

whether to read the full text’.

The paper at hand provides students with the correct methodology of writing an APA

abstract. In this respect, writing a correct abstract is tackled from two sides (Form and Content).

1. Abstract Format

The format of the abstract plays a massive role in the efficiency of your abstract. What is

meant by the format is what appears on your page. The figure below should give a clear idea

how an abstract should look like

Figure1: Abstract Format According to APA 7th ed 2020

According to the figure above, this is how an abstract page looks like according to the

APA 7th edition. The following tips explains further the methodology of how the format of the

abstract is written:

➢ Recommended fonts: 12-point Times New Roman

➢ Margins: 2.5 cm. on top & bottom, 2cm on the right and 3cm on the left

➢ Placement: third page of the dissertation

➢ Title label: title is written ➔Abstract

 1. centered and in bold

2. written on the first line of the page

➢ Page number: using small Romanic numbers iii on the top right of the paper.

➢ Text:

1. one line below the section label

2. not indented and written as a single paragraph

3. double-spaced

2. Abstract Content:

As asserted before, the abstract summarizes specific information from the dissertation.

These information help readers grasp an overall idea about the research at hand, therefore

decide whether it is suitable for their research or not. The information tackled in the abstract

are as follows:

❖ Aim: in one statement or two indicate the purpose of your research.

❖ Problematic: briefly explain your research problematic

❖ Methodology: indicate the type of the methodology conducted (qualitative,

quantitative…etc)

❖ Data collection tool: explain which data collection tool you have used in your

research (questionnaire, interview, observation, TSB…etc)

❖ Case of study: identify your case of study by introducing the nature of your

participants or subjects

❖ Data Analysis: Explain how will you analyse the collected data and which

(linguistic, didactic) model will you use.

❖ Findings: provide a hit or tell the reader what to expect as a result of your

experiment.
 The placement of the abstract is at the beginning of the research; however, it is the last

one to be written alongside with the general introduction. This means that after you finish your

research then you write the abstract because all the information will be available for you. Below

is a specimen on how to deal with the specific information or rather say the components of the

abstract taken from an unpublished dissertation written by Aoued, A. (2017) University of

Mostaganem Abdelhamid Ibn Badis.

Abstract

The present work aims at identifying the language of witchery and whether it can affect and

control human mind. Therefore, the main question that is raised in this research is, to what

extent do witchcraft spells effect the individual behaviours? The problematic at hand seeks to

find out the crucial linguistic element in witchcraft and whether it has a role in this domain or

not. To answer our research question and the requirement of our investigation urge us for a

sociolinguistic qualitative analysis. Consequently, a semi-structured interview is conducted as

a data collection tool which was directed to different participants from Mostaganem city -

Algeria. The selection of the participants targeted some random citizens of different age and

social backgrounds, religious people (Imam), and psychologists. The data collected is analysed

with NVIVO software and after a conducting a speech act theory investigation, it is believed

that that the main reason behind the impact of witchcraft on people’s behaviour is due to

language used in cooperation between the spells and Talasims.

Keywords: Sociolinguistics, speech act theory, witchcraft, Talasims, spells.