Improving advanced reading comprehension in a foreign language: summaries vs. short‐answer questions

Abstract

Summarizing appears to be an activity well suited to sensitizing advanced foreign language readers to the inner workings of a text and weaning them away from wordto-word decoding. Indeed, recent research has emphasized the importance of summarizing as an aid to reading comprehension (Cohen, 1987; Bernhardt, 1986;Brown et al., 1981). We were interested in using summary writing as a tool in promoting reading comprehension and hypothesized that students who gained practice in extracting the main points of a text would become more effective readers.The main purpose of the study was to determine whether the comprehension of students who were trained to summarize improved more than that of students who responded to short-answer questions. The researchers, who teach EFL (English as a foreign language) at Haifa University, taught 6 classes totalling 179 students. Three classes summarized 10 academic texts of general interest, while the other three classes answered short-answer questions on the same texts. At the same time we collected information on the students' background in order to identify possible non-linguistic factors that may affect reading comprehension.Since the reading comprehension of all the classes improved significantly, it was not possible to say that either summarizing or the answering of questions was a major cause of this improvement. However, results suggest that writing summaries helped students read more efficiently. Results of MANOVA pointed to the conjoint effects of three factors: task (summary vs. short-answer questions), gender (male vs. female), and native language (Hebrew vs. Arabic).Perhaps the most interesting finding is that classroom discussion in which students negotiated the scoring key of both summaries and responses to short-answer questions (after handing in assignments) proved to be extremely valuable. This negotiation motivated students to become intensely involved with the text and more critical of their own responses. ISSN 0141-0423 $2.00 0 1990 Journal of Research in Reading (UKRA) 56 MARSHA BENSOUSSAN AND ISABELLE KREINDLER RESUME Lire et rksumer des textes en langue ktrang2reOn a demand6 A des etudiants d'universitk de lire des textes anglais appartenant a leur domaine de specialisation. En cours de lecture, gentralement, les etudiants resument et retirent l'information essentielle des textes. Des recherches rkcentes ont montre que la comprehension de la lecture se developpe par la pratique du resume, mais qu'il est plus difficile de resumer des textes ecrits dans une langue etrangere que dans sa propre langue.On a effectue une etude preliminaire pour examiner I'effet du resume sur la comprehension de la lecture. Les chercheurs, enseignants d'anglais comme langue etrangtre A I'Universite de Hayfa, ont enseignk A 6 classes, soit un total de 179 etudiants. Le groupe experimental de 3 classes a resume 10 textes, tandis que le groupe temoin de 3 classes, a repondu a des questions a reponse courte portant sur les mCmes textes. I1 a ete rkpondu, en hebreu et en anglais, A un pre-te...

Reading to summarize in English and Chinese: A tale of two languages?

“…In fact, summarization has been extensively used as a teaching and learning strategy to improve reading abilities (e.g. Bensoussan & Kreindler, 1990;Cordero-Ponce, 2000;Dermody & Speaker, 1999;Jitendra, Cole, Hoppes, & Wilson, 1998) and content acquisition and subject learning (e.g. Friend, 2002;Radmacher & Latosi-Sawin, 1995;Selinger, 1995).…”

Specifying the Criteria for the Testing of Reading Comprehension

“…This is the reason why cloze test are not included in the IELTS and TOEFL. Marsha Bensoussan (1990), from the University of Haifa came forward and conducted a research on the comparison of cloze and multiple choice items.…”

The relationships between dimensions of writing motivation and reading comprehension

“…According to Greene (1988), writing activities have a positive influence on reading comprehension. Similarly, Bensoussan and Kreindler (1990) argued that summarizing improves reading comprehension. All these suggest a circular relationship among reading, writing, and comprehension.…”

“…Therefore, numerous studies have been conducted on the connection between reading and writing, two skills that are taught simultaneously. Different variables have been the focus of such studies, including writing motivation (Troia et al, 2013;Troia et al, 2012), levels of reading and writing motivation (Mata, 2011), the correlation between reading comprehension and summarizing (Bensoussan and Kreindler, 1990;Gao, 2013), special practices for reading and writing development (Barackman et al, 1995), and writing achievement as well as the use of reading comprehension strategies (Kirmizi, 2009). A review of literature suggests that most of these studies on writing, reading comprehension, motivation, and the use of strategies are descriptive and explore potential correlations.…”