The Effect of Three Forms of Summarization Instruction on Sixth Graders' Summary Writing and Comprehension

Abstract

Three forms of summarization instruction comprised the treatment and control conditions explored in this study of sixth graders. The two treatment groups received direct instruction in either a rule-governed approach to summarization or an intuitive approach. A control group simply received advice to find main ideas with no explicit modeling. Two dependent measures were used to judge the efficacy of the three instructional approaches to summarization: (a) a paragraph summary writing task and (b) a standardized test of paragraph comprehension. On both measures, treatment groups significantly outperformed the control group. The results are discussed from the perspective of a combined textlinguistic and direct instruction model of learning.