Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the summarizing skills in the first language (L1) of learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) affect their summary performances in a second language (L2). To examine the transferring of L1 summarizing skills to L2 summary performance it is necessary to figure out which L1 knowledge and skills EFL learners already possess. A total of 47 Japanese university students with low intermediate English proficiency were asked to write a summary in their L2 (i.e., English) and L1 (i.e., Japanese) of a text written in each of the same languages after they received a quick lecture on how to write a summary. The relationship between their L1 and L2 summarizing skills was examined by using the scores from their L1 and L2 summary performances. The results showed that a small variance of L1 summarizing skill affected the overall summary performances in L2, which supports the Cummins’s (1976) Linguistics Threshold Hypothesis. This study concludes by offering several suggestions for teachers of summary writing, and implications for future research.
Highlights
1.1 Literature ReviewSummarizing a text is a highly complex cognitive skill (Kirkland & Saunders, 1991), and summary production involves a complex interplay of cognitive and metacognitive activities (Hosseinpur, 2015)
The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the summarizing skills in the first language (L1) of learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) affect their summary performances in a second language (L2)
It is hypothesized that L1 summarizing skills affect the performances of summarizing skills in L2 (See Figure 2 in detail), and the results show that parts of the summarizing skills such as finding main ideas (i.e., Main idea coverage) and expressing accurate information from the source text in their own words (i.e., Source use) seemed to influence students’ performances in English
Summary
1.1 Literature ReviewSummarizing a text is a highly complex cognitive skill (Kirkland & Saunders, 1991), and summary production involves a complex interplay of cognitive and metacognitive activities (Hosseinpur, 2015). Many students, especially students from China, Japan, and Korea, have different backgrounds of writing education to students from Western countries (e.g., Liebman, 1992; Pennycook, 1996; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005; Shi, 2006). As Liebman (1992) mentions, the L2 rhetorical instruction in the Japanese school system tends to focus on grammar, and Japanese high school students even receive little L1 writing training. According to Kobayashi and Rinnert (2001, 2002), Japanese high school students experience very little writing of any kind, and their knowledge of writing can be called self-taught because they do not receive sufficient L1 composing instruction throughout their academic contexts (Casanove, 1998). When students from East Asian countries study in U.S universities, they require explicit instruction in integrated reading and writing skills (Leki & Carson, 1997)
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