The necessary of strategy instruction for summary writing

In the article “Effects of Strategy Instruction on Summary Writing of college Students” written by Rosalie Friend, Hunter College of the City University of New York, the author mainly does a research about what summarization instruction conditions should be and they will be more effective to help students. The author mentions T. A. van Dijk and W. Kintsch’s (1983) text-processing theory several times and the results of the study give one more affirmative to this theory.

The author’s method to do this research is to practice an experiment: College freshmen registered in a prefreshman writing course were randomly assigned to three conditions for 2 days of classroom instruction to write a summary. And summarization instruction conditions were argument repetition or generalization with a control group taught to examine personal judgments of importance. And then the author will do an analysis of test summaries.

Actually, the text-processing theory of van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) implicates “argument repetition in the text as a key factor in microprocessing and generalization as a key cognitive process in macroprocessing,” two important elements of reading. This study also showed the role of argument repetition and generalization in the cognitive processes of summarization by contrasting them in an instructional study. And according to the experiment, “direct instruction comparing strategies using argument repetition or generalization enabled students to make better judgments of importance than a control group; generalization was even stronger than argument repetition for helping generation of a thesis statement.” So, most importantly, aimed to reading or writing instruction, students should be directed to construct main ideas and theses, not try to select them from the surface structure of text.

In my opinion, summary writing should be taught by some strategies, not just ask students to write down something important in their mind. Because students are learners to need to be directed and if you don’t give them some directions, it will cost them much time to contract a clear summary. Although students can be progressive to know how to make a thesis statement by degree, the strategies can help them effectively to do better. Every method has its own value, and good instruction will make students learn better and more effectively, so why do we let students fumble by themselves?