Summarizing strategies of Taiwanese undergraduate English majors

[[abstract]]此研究探討臺灣英語系學生對於一份好的摘要所具備的知識;在摘要過程中，認知與後設認知策略的使用;以及學生們聲稱在摘要寫作當中所做的行為，是否與他們真實的表現相符。此研究檢視以下特定的策略: 重點挑選，刪除不重要訊息，合併觀念以及抄寫。除此之外，還探討摘要的正確性。共計32位國立高雄第一科技大學英語系學生參與此研究。在研究的開始，學生完成問卷第一、二部分，即基本資料，以及學生認為一份好的摘要需要具備哪些要素。研究過程中，學生寫了三份有關三篇語言相關文章的摘要，其中二份做為此資料的分析。在完成最後一份摘要後，學生們填寫第三部分的問卷。此部分問卷旨在調查學生在摘要寫作過程中所使用的策略。研究結果如下， 1 受試者具備一些好的摘要所需的基本要素的知識。即他們了解一份好的摘要需要比原文簡短、提及重點、去除不重要訊息、正確反映原文，不可扭曲文章原意或添加額外訊息或意見、以及直接抄寫原文是不允許的。 2 將原文的重點畫底線或畫螢光筆是學生最常使用的認知策略。學生閱讀文章時，用此認知策略註記重點，再使用畫底線的要點寫摘要。完成摘要後，用此認知策略來評估所寫的摘要。 3 學生寫作二份摘要時的表現，在挑選重點及合併文章觀念二個策略上表現不佳。摘要長度「一頁左右」的規定可能造成學生在摘錄重點的限制，而刪去許多不重要的訊息，以精簡他們的摘要。學生們可能不知道如何有效地合併文章觀念，或合併文章觀念對精簡摘要的重要性。雖然大部分的學生表示他們沒有抄寫，而是意譯文章中的句子;但實際上在摘要中，他們至少抄寫了一句原文章中的句子，有些學生甚至大量的抄寫文章句子。學生在摘要正確性的二個特點「文意扭曲」及「文章干擾」的表現中，與他們聲稱在摘要上所做的也有所抵觸。學生們表示他們沒有添加文章中未出現的訊息，但事實上，有些受試者的確在他們的摘要中添加了文章中所沒提及的訊息;而有些受試者則是在摘要中扭曲了文章的原意。 總括而言，學生認定他們所使用的策略並非都符合他們在摘要寫作上的真實表現。學生需要在如何寫一份好的摘要上接受更多的指導，也需要多練習摘要寫作。特別需要老師在挑選重點、合併觀念、以及意譯代替抄寫這幾個方面上給予回饋。[[abstract]]This study investigates Taiwanese English majors’ knowledge of the features of a good summary their cognitive and metacognitive strategies used while writing summaries and whether students’ claims about what they do are consistent with their actual behavior in their written summaries Specific strategies investigated included selection deletion combination of idea units and copying; summary accuracy was also examined A total of 32 third-year English majors at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology in Taiwan participated in the study At the beginning of the study students completed two parts of a questionnaire asking about students’ background information and their perceptions about the features that characterize a good summary They then wrote three summaries two of which were analyzed for the study and completed a brief survey after reading each assigned article and writing the summary for it The third part of the questionnaire was administered after the final summary to investigate the strategies they said they used during the summarizing process The summaries were based on three language-related articles The main findings of the current study are as follows: 1 Participants in the study have some knowledge about the basic requirements of a good summary They reported that they understood that a summary should be shorter than the original article; main points should be included; minor points should be excluded; summaries should accurately reflect the original by not distorting the original meaning or adding extraneous information or opinions; and direct copying was not acceptable 2 The most frequently used cognitive strategy was underlining or highlighting main ideas in the original article They used this strategy during each phase of the writing process; that is they used it when reading the articles to note the main points They also used the highlighted points to write their summaries After they finished a summary they used them to evaluate it 3 As for students’ performance on writing the two main summaries selecting main ideas and combining of content ideas are two strategies that students did not perform well on in the current study The researcher-imposed length limitation of about one page may have contributed to the limited number of important idea units that students included in their summaries In contrast participants deleted most of the less important ideas in their summaries to shorten their summaries Students may not have known how to combine content ideas effectively or understood their importance in condensing an article Furthermore even though most of the students claimed that they did not copy but might have paraphrased sentences from the original text most did in fact copy at least one sentence and some copied extensively As for the two features of summary accuracy distortion and intrusion students’ claim of what they did was also contradicted by their actual behavior in their summaries They claimed they did not add information that was not stated in the text but in fact some participants did Some also distorted the original meaning of some of the ideas when they wrote their summaries The researcher concluded that students’ understanding of summary writing strategies did not always match their application of these strategies in actual summary writing tasks The results also show that students need more instruction on writing a good summary and opportunities to practice summarizing with instructors’ feedback especially on areas such as selecting main ideas combining idea units and paraphrasing idea units in lieu of direct copyin