Investigating the effects of mediating tasks upon a summary writing activty

• Main Author: Ho, Soon Teet
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Kota Samarahan : Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 2002. 2002
• Subjects: AC Collections. Series. Collected works
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/840/8/HO%20SOON%20TET.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/840/

The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the effects of mediating tasks upon a summary writing activity. The study also aims to find out how students' summaries would differ from the mediating task in terms of targeted points, length of words and choice of words. The mediating task chosen is group discussion. This study involved 40 Form 4 students of Sekolah Menengah Kerajaan St. Joseph, Kuching. The 40 students were divided into the experimental group and the control group. A reading text was administered to both groups of students before the summary writing activity. The experimental group was allowed to discuss the text before the writing activity. The control group wrote their summaries after reading the text. The time given for the summary writing task is 80 minutes. The two groups' summaries were analyzed using content analysis. The content analysis examined the number of targeted points, the number of words, and the choice of words in the summaries. The t-test for the Independent Samples reveals that there were no significant differences in the overall ratings of the summaries. The discussion of implication for teaching assesses the use of mediating tasks on language teaching. There are also a few recommendations for further studies of using mediating tasks of the teaching of summary writing.