Strategies adopted by skilled and unskilled Filipino and Iranian first year college students in summarizing an expository text

• Main Author: Mercado, Maria Cristina P.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2011
• Subjects: Exposition (Rhetoric); English language; Linguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/324; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/1323/viewcontent/CDTG005131_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study describes the strategies adopted by skilled and unskilled Filipino and Iranian first year college students in summarizing an expository text in English. It investigates how the summaries written by the two groups are described in terms of quality specifically whether the skilled students produce good summaries, whereas the unskilled ones write poor summaries. The participants were freshmen Dentistry students enrolled in English 112 at the University of the East, Manila campus. Responses to the think aloud procedure were transcribed verbatim. The researcher, along with two raters described all the strategies employed by both groups of student writers after which a list of strategies was drawn and individual strategies were described and identified. Similarly, the written summaries were scored by the researcher and two raters following a rubric adopted for the study. Results revealed that the most frequently verbalized strategies among the skilled Filipino writers were text evaluation, reading the summary, repeating, acknowledging information, and trying out lexical item/s. These strategies represent the main processes of writing and revising. Among the least frequently used strategies included agreeing, reducing anxiety, delaying, and deleting. The unskilled Filipino students, on the other hand, although employed a fewer number of strategies compared to the skilled group demonstrated parallel strategies in their verbal reports. The other half that comprised the participants of the study, the skilled Iranian students reported limited number of strategies. The analysis of their verbal reports showed only 8 out of the 22 described among the skilled Filipino group. Among those 5, a prevalent use of repeating and rereading source text was found. These composing behaviors also represent the processes of writing and revising. Those they less frequently used were deleting and text evaluation. The unskilled Iranian students showed a very limited use of strategies which only included rereading source text and translation. The analysis of the written summaries of the Filipino students showed that the skilled group obtained a combination of High and Mid rating in their summaries, whereas the unskilled group obtained a Low rating. The considerable gap in the scores, however, was due to the failure of the latter to meet the criteria in the rubric adopted for the study specifically in identifying the main idea and the presence of grammar errors. The written summaries of the skilled and unskilled Iranian students, on the other hand, revealed similar results. Both groups received a Low rating. Their essays did not qualify as acceptable summary. The lapses in grammar contributed significantly to the low scores they received considering that the errors contained in their summaries clearly interfered with meaning and made their essays incomprehensible. Not to mention the lapses in punctuation marks, spelling, and diction. The study attempted to shed light to the fact that awareness of writing strategies determines the success or failure of students in composing a summary and perhaps, other reading-to-writing tasks in general. It is recommended then that although skilled writers are more often than not capable of producing good summaries, teachers of writing in the college level still need to be aware of their students awareness and use of strategies in writing, especially those who are unskilled since their knowledge of their students strategy use when writing different text types may help them provide facilitative training that would help maximize the effective use if not the development of these strategies among all their students.