On The Text Summarizing Strategies In Chinese Reading Of CSL Learners

This study explored the strategies adopted by Chinese as a second language learners to summarize texts' main idea,discussed the mental processes involved in summarization,and analyzed the features of the cognitive processing during the summarizing process.According to the study,CSL learners own a low ability of summarizing a Chinese text's main idea and severely lack the summarizing strategies.And the reasons causing theses phenomena are further studied in this paper.On the basis of the above work,this research enlightens the instructional methods of training of the text summarizing ability in Chinese as a second language teaching and the research methods of studies of second language learning's 'micro strategies'.Through the analysis of students' summarizing protocols,verbal reports(retrospective reports&stimulated recall),interviews and questionnaires,the author discovered the following strategies adopted by CSL learners to summarize a Chinese text's main idea.Strategy 1.Utilizing structure signals in textsStrategy 2.Combing main idea of each paragraph of a textStrategy 3.Utilizing a text's opening and/or closingStrategy 4.Utilizing a text's titleStrategy 5.Relying on schemata in readers' long-term memoryStrategy 6.Relying on personal experience of readersStrategy 7.Adding the contents of each paragraph of a textAccording to the different kinds of knowledge that drives the above strategies,the author classifies the strategies into 'those driven by learner's text knowledge' and'those driven by learners' background knowledge'.Strategy 1-4 belong to the former type and strategy 5-7 belong to the latter.Through the comprehensive analysis of the usage of the above strategies,the author discusses the following features of the cognitive processing of CSL learners'summarizing Chinese texts' main idea.Firstly,learners use more than one strategy when summarizing texts' main idea.Even if the strategies are contradictory,they are still used simultaneously.'The strategies driven by learners' background knowledge' exert more influence on summarizing than 'those driven by learners' text knowledge'.Secondly,the mental process of CSL learners' summarizing Chinese texts' main idea features "top-down" information processing.Strategies are often applied mechanically.Even if a/some strategy(ies)doesn't/don't fit a text,it/they is/are still used in the text's summarization.Lastly,the fact that "bottom-up" information processing is lacked in summarizing and students cannot choose or adjust strategies according to the texts being processed is attributed to learners' lack of summarize-main idea-strategies.Through the interviews and questionnaires,the author explores the reasons that cause students' lack of strategies and low ability to summarize texts' main idea.The reasons are investigated from the perspective of CSL learning and teaching situation concerning summarizing texts' main idea,and the transfer of learners' summarizing strategies in their first language reading.In Chinese as a second language teaching,vocabulary and grammar is instructional focus and it is seldom taught how a text's main idea is summarized out and how the organization of a text's contents is analyzed.This causes students'lacking strategies of text summarizing and their low ability.Also,it is found out that it is one of the factors influencing learners' text summarizing ability if the corresponding strategies in their first language reading could be positively transferred into Chinese reading.