A qualitative study on the use of summarizing strategies in elementary education

Abstract

The objective of this study is to reveal how well summarizing strategies are used by Grade 4 and Grade 5 students as a reading comprehension strategy. This study was conducted in Buca, İzmir and the document analysis method, a qualitative research strategy, was employed. The study used a text titled "Environmental Pollution" and an "Evaluation Criteria Form". The maximum sampling method was used to obtain data from 246 students from 6 different schools. The first language of the participants in the sample was Turkish. Students were asked to summarize the text "Environmental Pollution" and their summarizing strategies were evaluated. The summaries were then assessed and codified as follows: surface summarizing, relating to the subject and writing the very same text again, paraphrasing the main idea, diverging from the main idea, and missing the main idea. In general we found that students made insufficient use of summarizing strategies.