A Study On The Application Of Concept Mapping And Generalizing Words Strategy For EFL Summary Writing In Senior High Schools

The rise of reading-to-write tasks in language assessment has made summary writing an authentic process to elicit more integrative language use.It was thereby considered an effective measure to assess candidates’ language proficiency combining reading with writing skills.In the third round of National Matriculation English Test(NMET)Reform starting in 2019,English as a Foreign Language(EFL)summary writing has been newly added to its writing section for the candidates in eight provinces and municipalities(including Chongqing),drawing great attention from frontline teachers and students in senior high schools.And thus,recent years have witnessed a growing body of research discussing the effects of strategies to teach EFL summary writing.However,empirical evidence for the effectiveness of strategy application in the setting of secondary education is not adequate.Therefore,the present research attempts to investigate the impact of strategy application on students’ EFL summary writing performance in senior high schools through a quasi-experiment.Based on the theories and knowledge of summarization and previous studies on concept mapping and generalizing words,the present research examined the effects of the two strategies applied in EFL summary writing on senior high school students’ summary writing performance with respect to cohesion and coherence,linguistic complexity and fidelity to source text.Three questions proposed in this research were to be answered:(1)What is the current status of senior high school students’ learning skills that are taken to complete summary writing?(2)Do concept mapping and generalizing words strategy application affect students’ summary writing performance in terms of cohesion and coherence,linguistic complexity and fidelity to source text? If yes,how do they affect the three aspects?(3)How does strategy application influence summary writing performance of students at different writing levels? During the eight-week treatment,effects of the application of the two strategies were investigated in three measures: a questionnaire survey,two summary writing tests and a follow-up interview.A sample of 132 eleventh graders was drawn from a Tongliang-based secondary school in Chongqing,and the participants were randomly divided into the first Experimental Class(EC1),the second Experimental Class(EC2)and the Control Class(CC).During the treatment,EC1 was taught to write a summary with the strategy of concept mapping and EC2 with the strategy of generalizing words,while CC was taught with conventional writing guidance.Plus,students in experimental classes were further grouped into three levels—High-level Group(HG),Medium-level Group(MG)and Lowlevel Group(LG)—with a view to evaluate the impact of concept mapping and generalizing words strategy application on different study groups.During the eight-week treatment,effects of the application of the two strategies were investigated in three measures: a questionnaire survey,two summary writing tests and a follow-up interview.After analyses of the experimental results using Group Statistics,One-Way ANOVA and Paired Samples Test in SPSS 25.0,three major findings were obtained as below.Firstly,the overall condition of senior high school students’ learning skills used for summary writing is at a medium level—slightly better than previously assumed.As statistical results showed that an overwhelming majority of students held strongly approved or moderately approved responses to cognitive skill use and metacognitive skill use during the summarization task,while for test management skill use the responses were mainly strong disapproval or disapproval.Secondly,application of both strategies,in part,positively affects students’ comprehension and summarization of the writing task but with varying degrees on each analytic measure: the most pronounced enhancement is achieved in fidelity to source text,followed by cohesion and coherence.While for linguistic complexity the progress is rather slim compared with the first two measures.Thirdly,within the experimental groups—EC1 and EC2,the summary writing performance of students at different writing levels experiences positive changes discriminately: LG and MG students gained much more progress than HG students as there were 7 LG students and 5 MG students shifting to a higher level while the improvement gained in HG was rather limited particularly for the holistic scores.Implications of these findings are discussed with reference to EFL summary writing instruction as well as guidance to strategy application in the setting of senior high schools,hoping to inform both frontline teachers and students of the usefulness of summarization skills and above all,the viable ways to deal with the new type of writing task along with the latest round of NMET Reform.Suggestions for further research pertinent to strategies applied to teach EFL summary writing in secondary school settings are also put forward.Hopefully,the present research is expected to render both empirical evidence and practical suggestions for English teachers to guide their future EFL summary writing instruction.