Academic Summarization via “Twitter” in a College EFL Context

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect of the limitation of 140-character in Twitter versus the free writing on the skill of the summary of senior level female students of the Department of English at Jouf University. The participants of the study consisted of 60 female students who were enrolled in writing skills course (ENGL122) the participants were distributed into two groups, each of 30 students according to their scores in TOEIC, test of English for International Communication. After that, the pre-test was administered to the two groups. Both groups had the same instructor but each group was instructed in a separate class. The study was conducted in eight sessions (experimental semester). Pre-test and post-test were administered over the study sample to evaluate the significant effect on participants’ summary writing in both groups. The study results indicated that participants in both experimental and control groups achieved higher mean scores in their performance of summary writing in terms of content comparing to their mean scores in terms of coherence. Also, the results show that the performance of Twitter group in summary writing score higher results in favor of coherence compared to the control group. Therefore, new technology and social media means such as twitter contributes to solve many of the problems EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners could face. This study aims to increase the motivation of Institutions of higher education to integrate Twitter with the educational process.