This paper will examine the purpose and value of summarizing through a close study of the various areas in which this skill proves to be essential and useful and will present an approach for teaching summary writing which will make it interesting and instructive to students. It proposes a teaching method which will afford students the opportunity to practice summarizing in a number of areas and for a range of different purposes, with the aim of helping them to see for themselves and to appreciate the practical benefits of being able to summarize.
The teacher must use a combination of visual and aural aids in order to stimulate interest and increase motivation.
It is recommended that the unit be divided into fourteen lessons; six of 35 minutes and eight of 70 minutes duration to be taught over a period of six weeks. While the subject will not have been exhausted in these fourteen lessons, students will have been provided with adequate foundation to assist them in becoming good summary writers.
It is hoped that by the end of the unit students will have come to a realization of the purpose and value of summarizing in everyday life, in school and in the world of work.
At a glance
- Six-week teaching unit planned across fourteen lessons
- Designed for a class of twenty-five students aged fourteen to sixteen
- Eleven selected teaching strategies include recorded speech, peer evaluation and group discussion
- Plans graded exercises on conciseness, recorded information and three written summaries
- 13 sources in the bibliography
Contents
1. RATIONALE
2. STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS / NEEDS
3. OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC
4. PRINCIPLES GOVERNING ORGANISATION OF TOPIC
5. TEACHING STRATEGIES
6. CONCLUSION
Objectives and Topics
This teaching unit explores how summary writing can help a secondary-school business studies class develop listening, reading and writing skills. It aims to make summarizing meaningful through practical applications and a sequence of classroom activities suited to the students’ needs and aspirations.
- The relationship between reading comprehension and summarizing
- The uses of summaries in education, daily life and employment
- Student needs, motivation and career aspirations
- Sequencing lessons from discussion to writing practice
- Teaching strategies and formative and summative assessment
Excerpt from the Book
The Reading Process
Listening and reading, according to Goodman (1972), are the receptive aspects of language use just as speaking and writing are the generative aspects. Further, written and oral language are alternate surface structures with the same underlying deep structure so that whether listening or reading, the language user must infer the deep structure from the surface structure. A brief study of the reading process should therefore highlight the importance of good listening and reading skills as a necessary foundation to good summarizing.
Reading, like summarizing, can be described as a process which involves the reader in a number of transactions. It starts, according to Goodman (1972), with the reader being presented with graphic display and ends with his having inferred meaning from the graphic display. It involves, in the words of McNeil (1964) “acquiring information from content and combining disparate elements into a new whole.” Estes (1982), Farr (1984), Goodman (1972) and Langer (1982) share the viewpoint that the reading process is interactive in that it requires that the reader brings into the text his/her own ideas, attitudes and experiences in order to interpret the writer’s meaning. Langer further postulates that meaning has to be considered as part of the writer’s growing vision of what the entire passage is about so that the meaning of the whole depends on the interpretation of separate segments of the text, on what came before and after. Estes goes on to quote Rosenblatt (1978) who, in expressing a similar view, describes meaning as emerging “from a network of relationships among the things symbolized as the reader senses them.” The above viewpoints serve to underpin the interesting observation made by Goodman (1972) that “a reading theory must be built on a psycholinguistic base.”
Bacon and Ruddell (1972) and Langer (1982) posit that meaning should always be the immediate as well as the ultimate goal of reading. Goodman goes further to explain that in order to arrive at meaning it is necessary to understand how language is used and how it works. He views grammar as the system of language, the system itself consisting of a number of variables (semantic, lexical, phonemic, phonological, and syntactical) which are interdependent and indivisible. It follows that language cannot be taken as a system of words since words taken independently cannot reflect meaning. In fact, both Goodman (1972) and Langer (1982) subscribe to the view that words in themselves are meaningless and that meaning has to be considered as the end result of a process of sampling, interaction and reconstruction on the part of the reader.
Chapter Summaries
RATIONALE: The author explains why summary writing was selected for a business studies class and outlines a six-week unit connecting the skill with practical purposes.
STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS / NEEDS: The class’s abilities, attitudes, ambitions and learning needs inform the proposed approach to reading comprehension and concise expression.
OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC: The discussion examines theories of reading and the summarizing process, then considers uses of summary in education, business and other fields.
PRINCIPLES GOVERNING ORGANISATION OF TOPIC: The unit is situated within a wider writing curriculum and organized as a progression from discussion to sustained practice.
TEACHING STRATEGIES: The author describes eleven instructional strategies and plans for formative and summative assessment.
CONCLUSION: The author reflects on the planned implementation and the value of sharing the unit with other teachers.
Keywords
summary writing, teaching unit, reading comprehension, listening skills, business studies, secondary education, student motivation, writing instruction, teaching strategies, peer evaluation, formative assessment, summative assessment
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this work about?
It presents a teaching unit designed to develop summary-writing skills in a secondary-school business studies class.
What are its central themes?
The work addresses reading and listening comprehension, concise writing, practical uses of summaries, student motivation and classroom assessment.
What is the main objective of the unit?
The unit aims to help students become effective listeners and readers and develop their ability to summarize information for practical purposes.
What approach does the author use?
The author combines discussion of educational literature with the design of a classroom teaching unit tailored to a particular group of students.
What does the main discussion cover?
It examines reading and summarizing processes, the organization of lessons, teaching strategies and approaches to evaluating student progress.
Which keywords characterize the work?
Key terms include summary writing, reading comprehension, listening skills, secondary education, teaching strategies and assessment.
How is the unit organized?
It is planned over six weeks and fourteen lessons, beginning with discussion of the purpose of summary and placing substantial emphasis on writing practice.
How will students practise summarizing spoken material?
The teacher plans to use tape-recorded speeches and conversations, giving students opportunities to summarize information they hear as well as information they read.
How will student progress be assessed?
The plan includes graded and ungraded exercises, questioning, observation and peer evaluation, followed by a questionnaire inviting students to evaluate the unit.
- Quote paper
- MA/ EnglishLiterature Joyette Fabien (Author), 1991, A Teaching Unit on Summary, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/333722
