| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 92 === This thesis explores the effectiveness of English summary writing instruction on the reading and writing abilities of EFL senior high school students in Taiwan. The present research attempts to offer comparison and analysis of the summary writing tasks, GEPT reading tasks, GEPT writing tasks, and the responses to the questionnaire in the pretest and posttest. One hundred and seventy-one students in the third year of An Kang Senior High School participated in this study, and were divided into the Experimental Group and the Control Group. Before the pretest, all the participants received a Chinese summary test. The pretest of the study mainly consisted of three tests (English summary task, Intermediate Level Tests on reading and writing abilities from GEPT) along with a questionnaire. Afterward, the Experimental Group received the instruction of summative skills based on the Rule Governed Approach as proposed by Bean and Steenwyk (1984). Three months later, both groups took the posttest.
Several findings are revealed from the analysis of the results. First, it is found that the subjects’ Chinese summative abilities had no significant impact on their English summative abilities. Second, after the treatment, it is evident that the experimental subjects who got better scores in the GEPT writing tasks showed better performances in the summary writing tasks. Third, the results show that the experimental subjects did better than the control group not only in the reading comprehension abilities but also in their writing abilities, and more importantly, in their summative abilities as well. Fourth, it is observed that the experimental group showed noteworthy improvement in the posttest GEPT reading comprehension task. Besides, they also obtained better scores in the posttest GEPT writing task and the posttest summary writing task. Fifth, the findings indicate that the experimental group did obtain better scores in the JCEE compositions, though the significance did not achieve the acceptable significance level of 0.05. Last, in the pretest questionnaire, both groups showed no obvious differences in their responses. In the posttest questionnaire, the experimental group demonstrated more positive attitudes toward the summary writing process while the control group showed no such preference.
Based on the findings, the researcher suggests that EFL senior high school teachers in Taiwan consider the possibility of incorporating the instruction of this approach in the writing class. The summary writing instruction administered in this study can be a viable approach to not only help polish students’ summative abilities but also help improve their reading and writing abilities. It should be noted, however, that the study was executed in only one senior high school and the students’ proficiency and the duration of treatment time are limited; therefore, it is not appropriate to over-generalize, and the results of the study should not be deemed applicable to all senior high school students here in Taiwan.
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