Goal Five: Present Concluding Remarks

The very last goal of an Abstract is to Present Concluding Remarks. Although many people devote few sentences to this last goal, the fulfillment of this goal is not as necessary as the other goals in an Abstract. Depending on the nature of your research, you can wrap up your Abstract by a brief Discussion of your Findings, the main Conclusions of the study, the main Implications or Applications of your Findings and some Recommendations. Sometimes, Present Concluding Remarks can be only half a sentence long that is merged with Present Research Results.

The concluding section of an Abstract can be either descriptive or evaluative or a mixture of both. In other words, it is typical for the Abstracts that include a concluding section to briefly describe the meaning of findings, implication, applications as well as the recommendations drawn from the research. However, they might do so by merely describing those or assigning positive evaluations to those descriptions such as in “the findings strongly support the researchers’ hypothesis regarding ….”. Here, the word “strongly” adds an evaluative twist to the concluding statement. The positive evaluative tone here might leave a plausible impression on readers as was desired by their authors. 

Now, let us do a mini analysis task. Please read the following sentence and determine if the concluding section is merely descriptive or evaluative?

1. We conclude that ecological niche modeling offers great potential for species delimitation. (Biology)
2. We provide assessment and treatment recommendations for care providers according to current clinical guidelines. (Psychology)
3. At the end, some pedagogical implications have been offered for EFL teachers and learners. (Applied Linguistics)
4. This paper also provides several remedial measures for improving the cold flow properties of biodiesel. (Engineering)
5. We show that detailed panel data are effectively unnecessary for estimating absolute mobility over the long run.