A Research On The Effects Of Summary Strategy On Tibetan Middle School Students’ Learning Of Scientific Text

The sound growth of science education is of great practical significance to national development and individual improvement.With emphasis upon "the trinity of education,science and quality workforce",scientific text and its relevant learning strategies which should be optimized have received more and more attention.In view of the far-reaching significance of science education to the development of minority nationality regions,the problems of comprehension difficulty and strategy improvement in the domain of scientific text reading need to be solved rapidly.As for the learning of scientific text,previous studies have proved the positive effect of summary strategy on it.Based on those conclusions,this research will explore the effects of different summary strategies on non-native Chinese speakers.Focusing on Tibetan middle school students who learn in bilingual teaching environment,this research adopts three two-factor between-subject experiments to compare the effects of different summary strategies on outcome and experience of the learning of scientific text.All of the three experiments treat learners’ intrinsic motivation level(interest,value,competence and pressure perception),cognitive load(intrinsic cognitive load,extraneous cognitive load and germane cognitive load)and learning outcome(retention,comprehension and transfer test)as dependent variables,and control learners’ verbal ability and prior knowledge during the process of data analysis.Experiment 1 aims to explore the effects of different summary strategies on scientific text learning.It adopts a two-factor between-subject experiment of 3(application mode: self-generated vs.predefined vs.blank control)×2(summary method: verbal summary vs.pictorial summary).The results show that compared with the verbal summary,pictorial summary can help gain a higher level of value perception;compared with generating pictorial summaries or reading predefined verbal summaries,studying the predefined pictorial summaries can significantly improve the grades of comprehension test.Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 have further studied the above mentioned two independent variables.From the perspective of improving the self-generated summary strategy,experiment 2 requires learners to compare the self-generated summary with the corresponding predefined summary.The experiment aims to explore the influences of different feedback supports(predefined summary and contrast prompt)on the effect of self-generated summary strategy in scientific text learning,it adopts a between-subject experiment of 2(comparison material: verbal summary vs.pictorial summary)×2(prompt: brief vs.detailed).The results show that the activity of comparing pictorial summaries will bring learners with more extraneous cognitive load than the activity of comparing verbal summaries;in the process of comparing various summary materials,providing more detailed prompt steps to support learners’ comparative activities can deepen their comprehension of the text content.From the perspective of improving the effect of predefined summary strategy,experiment 3 aims to explore the effect of different combinations of verbal and pictorial content on scientific text learning.It adopts a between-subject experiment of 2(text content: original text vs.verbal summary)×2(presentation mode:written vs.audio).The results showed that under the condition of presenting text in the form of audio,the individual who learns the verbal summaries feels more pressure than those who learn the original text;compared with studying the integration of original text and pictorial summaries,studying multimedia summary can help promote learners’ performance on comprehension and transfer test.Under the conditions of the present study,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)The application of different summary strategies will have different effects on learning outcome and learning experience.Compared with the other three types of summary strategies,the predefined pictorial summary strategy can help improve learners’ intrinsic motivation to a certain extent,and effectively promote learners’ performance on comprehension test.(2)Using feedback with different levels of detail will have different effects on the application effect of the self-generated summary strategy.The more detailed the feedback support,the more helpful it is for learners to understand the content of the text at a deeper level.(3)Different combination forms of pictorial and verbal content will have different effects on the learning outcome of scientific texts.Compared with the integrated content of the original text and pictorial summary,learning a predefined multimedia summary is more helpful to improve learners’ comprehension of the text content and further realize knowledge transfer.