The trend toward evaluating Russian universities according to a number of publications indexed and cited in Scopus and Web of Science has escalated quickly over the past years. However, due to the fact that in many universities in Russia and abroad students are not taught academic writing, a fairly large number of researchers find it difficult to write a good abstract both in Russian and English. To solve this problem, we set a goal - to find out what has already been done in research on this topic, whether the mental model technique we proposed will become effective for students, and the knowledge gained will be reflected when writing an abstract. A review of research articles confirmed our doubts. We see that in fact, in academic writing, the researchers mostly give examples of abstracts from various sources or just enumerate general recommendations. There has been less focus on how to write a good abstract. It is eventually forcing students to imitate, rather than learn how to write an abstract for their research. We offer a method of learning through a logical chain of sequential steps that will help students to achieve good results for their further independent work on any project. By the end of the design technology of scientific creativity, our students are able to write an abstract for their own manuscript. Thus, the novelty of the study is found in the fact that, on the basis of the obtained model, a set of steps and its positive result are determined. Our paper also presents the results of the work performed by Masters and PhD students of KNRTU-KAI as well as undergraduate students of Lobachevsky Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics of KFU. The results illustrate that teaching students EAP (English for Academic Purposes) contributes to the acquisition and improvement of new knowledge by students and has a positive impact on academic competitiveness. Thus, later on, future scientists will have more opportunities to publish their research internationally.

Keywords: University, students, abstract, design technology, scientific creativity, EAP, education.