Writing a successful applied linguistics conference abstract: The relationship between stylistic and linguistic features and raters’ evaluations

Abstract

The conference abstract (CA) is a promotional genre that is vital to academic success. However, composing a high-quality abstract can be challenging for both first (L1) and second language (L2) writers. Some researchers have performed contrastive analyses of accepted/rejected CAs, yet few studies have analyzed the extent to which different stylistic and linguistic features can predict reviewers’ scores. The current study furthers this line of inquiry, while also responding to scholars’ recent calls for more replication work in the fields of applied linguistics and second language acquisition. Using a corpus of 304 abstracts from an applied linguistics conference, the current study is an approximate replication that analyzes the extent to which 32 variables are predictive of CA raters’ evaluations. Data analyses consisted of multiple stages, including examining the relationships between CA scores and nine stylistic variables (e.g., rhetorical moves, study completeness) and 23 linguistic variables (e.g., grammatical errors, and lexical and syntactic complexity measures). Statistically significant variables were then entered into a regression model. Results suggest that seven variables accounted for approximately 25 percent of CA scores. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed for L1/L2 writers, along with future research directions.