Korean English Learners' Identification of the Relative Importance of the Text

Abstract

This study examines how Korean English learners evaluate the relative importance of the text when they select text items for summarizing. Three types of Korean English learners participated in this study: College students, high school students, and Korean language instructors. The native speakers of English were involved as the control group. The awareness of selection rule was assessed by questionnaire and the actual selection of the structurally important content was analyzed by the frequency of the text items in the summaries. This study found that the understanding of text importance was different between the Korean English learners and the native speakers; the Korean learners tended to summarize in detail, so they use more words than the native speakers. Korean English learners also included many examples in their summaries. It was proved that the Korean learners differed from the native speakers in what they included in their summaries because they varied in what they considered important. Therefore, the Korean learners' differences in selecting the ideas resulted from the different concepts of judging the importance of the text information, not from the ignorance of the selection rule.