The ability of undergraduate students to meet established academic conventions when producing various genres of academic writing is vital for clear scholarly communication and becomes especially challenging in a second language. In Slovakia, thesis abstracts must appear in both the primary language (typically Slovak) and a foreign language (commonly English). This study examines the quality of English abstracts, by analysing 20 bachelor-level final-thesis abstracts developed by undergraduates studying the “Teaching English Language and Literature and Slovak Language and Literature” programme at Trnava University. As the first step, the study systematically categorises each abstract as either descriptive—summarising work content without evaluative judgments, results, or conclusions—or informative—stating the research rationale, problem, methodology, findings, and implications. Employing a mixed-methods approach, abstracts were coded for the presence or absence of the aforementioned key features (e.g. purpose, methods, results, conclusions), combining frequency counts with qualitative discourse analysis. Results reveal that while majority of submissions align with the descriptive type, they often omit clear statements of scope and methods. Among the informative group, over majority fail to articulate results or implications fully. These omissions limit the abstracts’ effectiveness and hinder readers’ grasp of each study’s contribution. Our findings underscore the need for targeted pedagogical interventions in academic English courses, advocating explicit instruction on abstract structure and essential feature inclusion to improve students’ abilities to craft concise, informative summaries.

Keywords: English, abstract, typology of abstracts, key features, analysis.