Implementing written summaries to improve reading comprehension in elementary, high school and university level

• Autores: María Rossana Ramírez Ávila
• Directores de la Tesis: Elvira Barrios (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidade de Vigo ( España ) en 2023
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Juan de Dios Villanueva Roa (presid.), Isabel Fernández Menor (secret.), Andrea Felipe Morales (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Equidad e Innovación en Educación por la Universidad de A Coruña; la Universidad de Cantabria; la Universidad de Oviedo; la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela y la Universidad de Vigo
• Materias:
  • Lingüística
    • Lingüística aplicada
      • Enseñanza de lenguas
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: Investigo
• Resumen

  • Learning English has become a necessity for students, professionals, and scholars. People that speak this language have more and better job opportunities. This benefit for students motivated this thesis. The researcher would like more students to become proficient in this language. One skill that can assist learners in that goal is reading. The introduction and literature review conducted for this study mention the advantages of reading not only in their mother tongue (Spanish or L1) but also in the foreign language (English or L2) and of using reading strategies. This prompted the main objective of this research study: To determine the impact of summaries in students reading comprehension; from this main objective, three other goals emerged: to determine if the impact was due to students proficiency or their gender, and to describe students perspectives towards reading in EFL. This research used a quantitative and qualitative approach. Due to the objectives of the research, it was developed in two phases. The first one was a pre-experimental study through the application of summarization of narrative texts to improve reading. This intervention was conducted in six different institutions: one elementary school, a language school, two high schools, and two universities. Participants were 171 students. Their proficiency was A1, A2 and B1. The comparison between the pretest and posttest indicated that there is a moderate to high impact (d .97) in reading comprehension after the use of summaries. Qualitative data from the learning logs reported that students changed their perspectives from negative (at the beginning) to positive (at the end). The second phase was descriptive. The researcher collected data from N = 1107 student-participants to know their perspectives towards reading in English. To this end, a survey that included a five-point Likert scale and open questions was applied. Results indicated that most participants read, but they mentioned they read because it is required by the teacher, and they mainly read within school boundaries. This may explain their limited use of reading skills. Findings disclosed that there is a high level of negative feelings when students read in L2. This is mainly due to their lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge, which makes them translate. This raises their negative feelings because it is time-consuming, and in most cases their translation is not accurate. Some of the perspectives reported in this instrument are shared by student-participants in Phase 1 of this study. It is concluded that the application of summaries can be a venue to improve students reading comprehension regardless of their proficiency level or their gender. To get positive results, students must be taught, modeled and monitored on how to use the strategy. Teachers should consider their students perspectives about the skill (reading in this case) to plan their lessons and meet their needs. Implications of this study are discussed and address local authorities, in-service and pre-service EFL teachers.