Using summarization as a strategy to investigate EFL learners' difficulties in reading comprehension at college of education

Abstract EN

Summarization is one of the reading strategies and it is an important part of any reading and writing curriculum.

Summary writing is supposed to be used widely in college classrooms where it is seen as both a means for assessing student learning as well as a way to increase understanding.

In order to complete summarization tasks EFL learners need to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the text.

Thus, a poor summary means a poor understanding.

Interpreting performance on such tasks indicates students' strengths and weaknesses in reading comprehension (RC).

EFL learners often face many difficulties in RC.

Some of the difficulties are failure in differentiating the main from the supporting ideas and finding the key words.

Summarizing reflects all these shortages.

This study aims at integrating writing and reading to find out the students' difficulties in RC through using summarization which provides a clear image about the students' abilities in understanding the text, the ability to differentiate the main ideas from the supporting ones.

To achieve the above aim, an article was given to be summarized by47 first year students divided into 12 groups at the department of English, college of Education for the academic year 2013-2014.

The results show that the first year students' main difficulties in RC are in finding the main and supporting ideas probably due to poor academic training in reading.

The results also show students' weaknesses in writing skill.

They could not write appropriate summaries.

The study has come up with recommendations that can help improve their skills and ability in reading and writing.