A Contrastive Analysis of English Abstracts for Agricultural Science and Technology by English and Chinese Eriters

This corpus-based study aims to compare and contrast the schematic structure of English research article abstracts by native English authors and Chinese authors in the field of agricultural science and technology. Two corpora were established, each consisting of 30 abstracts about empirical research. Findings of the manual move analysis suggest that native English writers prefer an interactive style by constructing abstracts with background information, whereas Chinese writers consider this move as an optional element. This paper will shed light on the teaching of language for academic purposes and help presenters to learn conventions and publish their work.