Summarization instruction: Effects on foreign language comprehension and summarization of expository texts

Abstract

This study reports the effects of metacognitive strategy training in summarization on the ability of foreign language learners to comprehend and summarize expository texts. Results indicated that students made substantial progress after the training: they included significantly more ideas units in their recall protocols, improved their ability to use the summarization rules, included significantly more important information in their summaries and expressed it in a more succinct manner. The improved summary performance was maintained three weeks after instruction ended. These results suggest that explicit instruction in the rules of summarization is an effective tool for improving comprehension and summarization of foreign language texts.