The effect of questions on writing summaries of narrative and expository texts by students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-6564e240092Keywords:
summary writing, narrative text, expository text, children, effect of questionsAbstract
This study investigated three aspects of summary writing: the effect of the conditions that produced the summaries; the effect of the type of text being summarized (narrative and expository); and children’s difficulties. Fifth graders in elementary school were divided into two groups according to two summary writing conditions: Condition 1 (with questions about the base text) and Condition 2 (without questions about the base text). The data showed that (i) the conditions in which the summaries were produced failed to affect the quality of the summaries, (ii) that children produced more elaborate summaries of the expository text than of the narrative text, and (iii) that their main difficulty involved remaining faithful to the content of the base text. The questions had no facilitating effect on the writing of summaries. Moreover, the quality of the productions varied depending on the characteristics of the text summarized.
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