10.9 Reading a scientific abstract — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the abstract of a French scientific article, le résumé , in any field, and find its parts quickly. Recognise the moves of an abstract: context, gap, objective, method, results, and scope. Use the fixed phrases of French academic writing: L'objectif de ce travail est de , Cet article présente , met en évidence , ouvre la voie à . Summarise a French abstract in two English sentences. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Les naissances sont moins fréquentes les jours fériés et les week-ends. Births are less frequent on public holidays and at weekends. Quand nous pensons à un matériau magnétique, nous imaginons instinctivement un aimant et le champ magnétique qu’il produit de lui-même. When we think of a magnetic material, we instinctively imagine a magnet and the magnetic field it produces by itself. Les acteurs impliqués dans le suivi des sites de baignade en rivière sont peu équipés d’outils permettant d’estimer l’évolution de la qualité bactériologique de l’eau. Those involved in monitoring river bathing sites have few tools for estimating changes in the bacteriological quality of the water. avec un équilibre global entre améliorations et dégradations du risque d'extinction. with an overall balance between improvements and deteriorations in extinction risk. les papillons de jour constituant des bioindicateurs clés de l'état des écosystèmes et un levier stratégique pour la restauration de la nature. butterflies being key bio-indicators of the state of ecosystems and a strategic lever for the restoration of nature. Prerequisites : 10.8 — this lesson follows 10.8 Argument . The academic French of 5.25 Vocabulary , the hedging of 5.27 Vocabulary and the science words of 5.19 Vocabulary will help. About this text French researchers publish in English in many fields, but a large part of research in the humanities, the social sciences, agriculture, the environment and public health still appears in French, and nearly every French article carries an abstract in French, often next to an English one. Being able to read these abstracts quickly is a practical skill for anyone who studies or works with France, and a good test of C1 reading: the sentences are long, dense with nouns, and written to a formula. This lesson gives six real abstracts, about 1,000 words in all, published between 2025 and 2026 and deposited in HAL, the French national open archive. They were chosen from different fields: demography, physics, sociology, water microbiology, ecology and computer science. All six are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, which allows them to be reproduced here with their authors and sources; they are given unchanged, each under its title. One of them ends without a full stop in the archive. The plan Most abstracts follow the same sequence of moves, though not all use every move, and the order can change. Move What it does Typical phrases Context Places the subject in a field or a social problem. Les … sont aujourd'hui … , Depuis les années … Gap Says what is not yet known or not yet possible. Bien que peu étudié … , sont peu équipés de … , Cependant, … Objective States what the article does. L'objectif de ce travail est de … , Cet article présente … Method Says how: data, survey, experiment, model. appuyé sur une enquête par observations , Nous proposons … Results Gives the main findings, often with figures. montre que … , met en évidence … , atteignent … Scope Says why it matters and what comes next. Ce travail ouvre la voie à … , souligne la nécessité de … Noun style. French academic prose prefers nouns to verbs: la mise à jour , l'actualisation , la prise en compte , la restauration des habitats . Where English writes to restore habitats , French writes la restauration des habitats . When a sentence seems hard, turn its nouns back into verbs in your head. Who speaks. Some abstracts use nous , Nous proposons , as English abstracts use we ; many prefer the article itself as subject, L'article montre , Cet article met en lumière , or the passive, sont discutés . Worked example The abstract on bacteria in rivers, divided into its moves. Context and gap. Les acteurs impliqués dans le suivi des sites de baignade en rivière sont peu équipés d'outils : people who monitor river bathing sites lack tools to predict water quality. The gap comes first, without a separate context. Objective. L'objectif de ce travail est de décrire quantitativement the natural mechanisms that make Escherichia coli disappear in the Seine and the Marne. Method and first results. Dans un premier temps , laboratory experiments: decay in the dark, from grazing by predators and breakdown of the bacteria, and decay caused by sunlight, each with its rate per hour. Second results. Par ailleurs , summer field data from several years give the rates actually observed in the river. Conclusion and scope. Les résultats de modèles simplifiés sont donc cohérents avec les données observées ; Enfin , charts for practical use are proposed. Notice the connectors that mark each step: Dans un premier temps , Par ailleurs , donc , Enfin . A two-sentence English summary: This study models how E. coli bacteria naturally disappear from the Seine and the Marne, combining laboratory decay rates in darkness and sunlight with several summers of river data. The simple models agree with observations and are turned into practical charts for managers of river bathing sites. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Six abstracts of scientific articles On which day are the most people born in France? Over the last ten years, from 2015 to 2024, the day with the highest average number of births is 20 July, while Christmas is the day with the lowest. Apart from late July and