The Effect of Summarizing Task and Interaction on Korean Middle School Students` Reading Comprehension = The Effect of Summarizing Task and Interaction on Korean Middle School Students` Reading Comprehension

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the summarizing task as a “-while-reading-” strategy on Korean middle school students’ English reading comprehension. Ninety-six students from three 7th grade classrooms were randomly assigned to controlled reading, individual summarizing, and collaborative summarizing groups. During two lessons of 45 minutes each, groups received two different approaches of summarizing instruction. The individual summarizing approach was based on direct instruction and the collaborative summarizing approach was an alternative instruction which facilitated active social interaction between students. Reading comprehension was measured at the end of each session using 10 multiple-choice questions on the main idea, detail information, inferential information, and vocabulary knowledge. Overall, the summarizing task groups outperformed the controlled reading group significantly but there was no significant difference found between two summarizing task groups. However, when gender was considered, male students performed better in individual summarizing group, while female students performed better in collaborative summarizing group. Therefore, there are benefits for English teachers in Korea to use the summarizing task in their classes to improve students’ reading comprehension. But they also need to consider the gender of their students when planning which collaborative task to use.