Upper‐Intermediate‐Level ESL Students' Summarizing in English

Abstract

This qualitative instrumental case study explores various factors that might influence upper‐intermediate‐level English as a second language (ESL) students' summarizing from a socio‐cultural perspective. The study was conducted in a formal classroom setting, during a reading and writing class in the English Language Institute at a university in the southeastern United States. Seven international ESL students provided information through questionnaires and interviews. Additional data were gathered through classroom observation. The findings of the study provide evidence that such personal factors as culturally influenced thinking patterns, content knowledge, motivation and attitude, and native language and second language literacy skills, as well as textual factors, writing style, vocabulary, and grammar, have an effect on ESL students' summarizing.

Verbal reports in the reading processes of language learners: A methodological review

“…Researchers in three studies (e.g. Seng, ; Kim, ; Vorobel & Kim, ) who adopted a sociocultural approach to research using verbal reports relied primarily on Bakhtinian and Vygotskian notions of the sociocultural nature of learning (Seng, ; Kim, ; Vorobel & Kim, 2011). These researchers relied on concurrent methods independently or on concurrent methods in conjunction with retrospective reports.…”

“…Goo, ); numbers of students, strategies, concepts attained (Lee‐Thompson, ); averages (Weil, ); and relationships (Leow, ; Zhang et al ., ). Conversely, when studies adopted either a sociocultural perspective or a reading and/or language model to examine the reading process (Lee‐Thompson, ; Vorobel & Kim, ), the analyses tended to be qualitative—that is, researchers focused on patterns such as difficulties experienced by learners in reading and the types of strategies used in particular instances.…”

“…Though no study within this review employed a sociocultural approach to the verbal reporting method per se, the few studies in which sociocultural approaches framed the reading process (i.e. Seng, ; Kim, ; Vorobel & Kim, ) involved a sociocultural interpretation of the protocols obtained from participant reports. That is, through the use of integrated concurrent, retrospective, and introspective verbal report methods, and even when concurrent measures were employed independently, researchers described the embeddedness of reading processes in social interactions.…”

“…In 18 studies, solely qualitative analyses were used on verbal report data. Researchers in these studies used verbal reports to obtain qualitative information, such as characteristics of readers’ processes (Chun, ; Gascoigne, ) and readers’ uses of different reading strategies in different languages (Hamada, ; Alsheikh, ; Vorobel & Kim, ).…”

“…Others relied strictly on inductive qualitative analyses (e.g. Yang, ; Kim, ; Vorobel & Kim, ). For example, Upton and Lee‐Thompson () coded the data from concurrent and retrospective protocols based on Pressley and Afflerbach's () three reading strategy types (i.e.…”