The Effect of Text Summarization as a Cognitive Strategy on the Achievement of Male and Female Language Learners' Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the effect of teaching the summarization of text as a cognitive strategy on achievement of male and female students’ reading comprehension. 60 English undergraduates studying at the University of Tonekabon participated in this study. The participants were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. A series of treatment were provided for the participants in the experimental group. Two reading comprehension tests, as the pretest and posttest, were given to the students of both groups to observe their reading comprehension ability at the beginning and at the end of the treatment sessions. A Two-way ANOVA was run on the obtained data. The results revealed that the instruction of summarization strategy had a significant effect on the participants reading comprehension. Finally, the findings of this study suggest that teaching summarization strategy empowers students’ reading comprehension ability.

Keywords: Reading comprehension strategies, Cognitive strategy, Summarization