An Exploration of ELT Undergraduates’ Implementation of Notes – taking Techniques in Reading Texts: A Case Study of ELT Undergraduates at Department of English Language, Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira – Sudan (2022).

Ammar Musa Ahmed Hassan1

Assistant Professor, at Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira, Sudan.

Email: ammarahmad5500@gmail.com

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HNSJ, 2022, 3(9); https://doi.org/10.53796/hnsj3924

Published at 01/09/2022 Accepted at 19/08/2022

Abstract

The note – taking is a challenging academic activity, because it calls for a number of closely related cognitive skills at the two higher levels of comprehension and selection of larger amount of information during the reading process. The transformation process requires changing the author’s exact words by using effective academic literacy skills, such as: paraphrasing, and summarizing the main ideas in the reading text. This study aimed at investigating to what extent ELT Undergraduates’ implement notes – taking techniques in their reading activities. The descriptive analytical method was adopted to attain the objectives of the study. The sample of the study consisted of two groups. The first group comprised of one hundred (n=100) ELT Undergraduates, who were chosen randomly from batch (42,) at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira, the second group was consisted of (30) EFL University English language teachers, they selected randomly from different Faculties in WadMadani, Gezira State, Sudan. Two tools of data collection were used in this study, a reading test was designed for ELT Undergraduates, whereas, the University teachers responded to a questionnaire. The data obtained was analyzed manually by using frequency and percentage. The main findings of the study were that. ELT Undergraduates demonstrated a remarkable underuse to implement paraphrasing (11%) and summarizing (18%), as two vital notes – taking techniques for extracting information from the reading test. The study also revealed a clear tendency to use copying – out from a reading text as a pervasive technique amidst ELT undergraduates, which considered the highest frequency (71%).

1.0 Introduction

Many writing methodologists considered notes – taking as paramount techniques for extracting important information from reading texts. Paraphrasing and summarizing are the most common notes – taking techniques, as the former focuses on reconstructing, and the latter on reducing the central ideas in the reading texts. On the one hand, the primary purpose of summarization is to exclude minor or inessential details, in order to produce a condensed written text; but on the other flip side, paraphrasing is a process of producing a revised text in the manner and the style of the paraphraser and not the original author.

1.1 Statement of the problem

The researcher has observed that a large number of Sudanese Undergraduates students majoring in English language teaching (ELT), have difficulties in implementing taking – notes techniques in language learning activities. In addition, a larger number of Sudanese ELT Undergraduates tend to depend on writing information as presented in the original texts, rather than being paraphrased or summarized in order to meet the standard practices demanded in taking notes methods. These problems are thought to have originated from EFL students’ inabilities to paraphrase or to summarize the main ideas of others properly; which constitute one of the serious problems in the language writing activities.

1.2 Objectives of the study

  1. To what the extent Sudanese ELT Undergraduates implement paraphrasing and summarizing skills in taking – notes activities.
  2. To suggest some effective techniques recommended to solve the problems of ELT Undergraduates in taking – notes.
    1. Questions of the study

The study attempts to answer the following questions:

  1. To what extent do ELT Undergraduates exploit paraphrasing and summarizing as techniques of notes – taking in reading activities?
  2. What are some effective techniques to be suggested to tackle ELT Undergraduates’ notes – taking problems?
    1. Hypotheses of the study

H1. The majority of ELT Undergraduates do not employ paraphrasing and summarizing as notes – taking techniques in reading activities.

H2 A number of techniques can be suggested to solve ELT Undergraduates’ notes – taking problems.

    1. Significance of the study

Surely, the ability to use effective paraphrase and summary in notes – taking activities are considered the mainstay of the foundation upon which the students’ reading assignments laid on. Accordingly, it is of paramount importance to improve ELT Undergraduates’ notes – takings skills, in order to help those students carry out their reading assignments. Therefore, the study seeks to investigate to what extent ELT undergraduates batch (42 ), at Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira utilize effective notes – taking techniques namely, paraphrasing, summarizing in conducting reading assignments, and to propose some effective notes – taking techniques to assist ELT undergraduates to become aware of the various notes – taking writing techniques. Hence, the findings of the study are expected to maximize ELT Undergraduates notes – takings skills, and will contribute to chart out a guideline to further studies beyond the scope of this study.

    1. Limits of the study

The scope of this study is limited principally to ELT Undergraduates’ from batch (42), at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira, implementation of paraphrasing and summarizing as notes – taking techniques during a reading activity. The study was carried out in the academic year of (20-22).

2. Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

Note- taking is considered an essential research skill for collecting ideas and gathering information throughout the research process. And, as the researchers read various sources, they can benefit a lot out of the diverse techniques of note-taking, such as: to organize or to arrange the extracted ideas and information, and also for a later revision or extension purposes. Furthermore, note-taking provides an external system for organizing, arranging, revising, expanding, or for even adding information later on while writing on a particular subject. Thus, it becomes important to understand this common activity,

Technically, note-taking is a skill of taking down the important points from a longer piece of writing. Mohan and Raman (2004) regard the term note-taking as the process of summarizing or paraphrasing information in forms of notes taken from a particular source. Mohan and Raman differentiated ‘note-taking’ from ‘note- making’. They indicate that while the term ‘note- taking’ is associated with the reading process, which means taking notes from written texts. The other term, ‘note- making’ is allied to listening; and this entails taking notes from oral texts such as, notes taken from a lecture, or from the proceedings of a meeting, and so on. However, regardless of this distinction, there are many methodologists who use ‘note- taking’ for the two processes.

In essence, note-taking is a productive skill, which requires the ability to comprehend and to identify the main ideas in a given text; in this manner, note taking never means writing down anything in a brief form, but to the contrary, the crucial ideas in a text should be written accurately, concisely, and in a cohesive way, by using appropriate logical connectors and linkers.

2.2 Some Types of Notes – Taking

Perrin (2007) classifies “notes- taking” according to the kinds of materials included in a piece of note- format. Among these four common kinds are:

  1. -Facts: A fact – note records technical information, such as names, dates, percentage, recorded in a simple outline or list format;
  2. Summaries: A summary-note presents the materials of the passage in a condensed form;
  3. Paraphrases: A paraphrase – note rewrites ideas from a passage in one’s own words, and using approximately the same number of words.
  4. Quotations: A quotation – note reproduces a writer’s words exactly.

However, for all note-taking types to be effective, Kolin (2007) suggests the following fundamental requirements:

  1. The ability to extract the main points of the text;
  2. The ability to exclude irrelevant points or details;
  3. The ability to summarize or paraphrase basic information; and,
  4. The ability to document appropriately the extracted notes.

At this level, it worth mentioning that Stanley (2000) remarkably states that “note-taking is the front-line of information ownership,” he emphasizes that this transition requires the note taker to make critical thinking in order to select the most important, relevant points, and then, the researcher needs to process these extracted information into a form of note to create information ownership. In addition to this, Stanley claims that “different types of researchers may generate notes that reflect different levels of cognitive processing,” this means, different kinds of notes result from the different levels of understanding. Thus, it could be stated that, the deeper the semantic processing is involved in note- taking- that is through summarizing or paraphrasing, the better notes are processed or produced. Henceforth, information in particular text is transformed rather than merely being copied in one’s own writing. Therefore, the aforementioned set of requirements (i.e., Kolin’s conditions from 1- 4), are considered essential steps for converting information ownership from the property of the original author to the user.

2.3 Techniques Used in Organizing Notes- Taking

Many outstanding educationalists considered notes – taking as a personal technique, because different note – takers prefer different methods for recording information from text. However, there is no right way or wrong way for taking down the important information, and it is regarded as a matter of an individual preferences or practices. In this regard, Blerkom (2007) holds that “there is no one prescribed way for taking notes,” he adds that, sometimes an outline could be the best way to record information, while at other times; mapping might be more appropriate technique. Thus, there are several methods for organizing and recording notes, some commonly recommended methods of taking notes are discussed on the following page.

2.3.1 An Outline – Note Technique

An out-line-note format is a simple technique, used to organize information in a regular pattern such as from general to the specific, or from a large topic to the detailed subtopic. Thus, this logic sequence permits the reader to know the details of a given topic. The topics within the an out – line format are organized or recorded by using Roman numerals (Ι,ΙΙ,ΙΙΙ…etc), Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, …etc), and lowercase (a,b,c,…etc) and uppercase letters (A,B, C … etc). In an attempt to clarify this format technique, Davis (2008) provides an example of an outline- note, in which a list of main ideas, subtopics, and important facts are written under headings and subheadings and subordinate details, wherein, the Roman numerals are used for the topics, while, English capital letters are used for the topics’ main ideas, and the subtopics are written with Arabic numerals, and the small letters are used for listing the topic’s details. Figure (.1) on the following page illustrates an outline- note method which could be applied by a note taker in order to clarify the concept of a well- organized teacher.

2.3.2 Clustering main idea (i.e. Mind-maps)

Clustering or mind mapping format is another technique used for taking notes. This technique was created and developed by Tony Buzan to represent the relationship between complex concepts. In this format, the note – taker begins by writing the main idea of the topic at the center of the page, and then connected with lines to the relevant subtopics in smaller circles around. Davis (2008) found that mind mappings help to support thinking; he adds that the technique of mind mapping helps to denote the relationships of each point to the main idea or to the main topic located in the center of the page, and thus helping the note – taker to create a link within the same topic. Therefore, the basic idea of mind mapping is to create a graphic diagram to show the relationship between the main ideas and branches. In an attempt to clarify the proper use of mind mapping, Davis (2008) provides the following example of the aspect “teaching styles” accompanied by many associated words connected together with the main idea (i.e. teaching styles) and thus making a visual mind map diagram as indicated in Figure (2).

As shown below, the diagram structure expands outwardly the topic of “teaching styles” in different directions making use of sub – ideas placed in small circles, and each sub – ideas has a direct relationship with the concept of “teaching styles”. In brief, mind mapping is an attempt to organize, visualize the related ideas to understand the relationship between concepts.

  1. The well- organized instructor

A. techniques

i. Beginning of class

a) announced day’s topic

b) Writes key phrases and

words on board

c) reviews previous class

materials

2. During class

a) emphasizes key phrases

and words

3. End of class

a) summarizes materials

b) asks for questions

Figure (1): A sample of writing an Outline Note- taking

Source: Davis, (2008): “The Adult Learner’s Companion: A guide for adult college students”

Figure (.2): Samples of Clustering Note Format

Source: Davis, (2008): “The Adult Learner’s Companion: A guide for adult college students”

2.3.3 Cornell’s Method of Note-Taking

Another method for taking note is invented by Dr. Walter Pauk who taught at Cornell’s university in (1950s). In attempt to provide historical background Andreatta (2008) claims that Dr. Pauk influenced greatly by ‘SQ3R’ method which is created in (1940s) by educationalist Francis P. Robinson, the method ‘SQ3R’ stands for “surveying, questioning, reading, recalling, and reviewing”.

Basically, Cornell’s note is based on dividing up each sheet of paper into two- parts that is by drawing a vertical line down the page, with three sections: the notes section, questions section, and the comments section, is demarcated by the horizontal line at the bottom of the page. The left side of the note is dedicated for the key words, while the right side is assigned for recording questions, examples, definitions for the key words written on the left side. Figure (3) on the following page shows the standard format paper for Cornell’s Method.

2.3.4 Venn’s Diagrams Method of Note -Taking

Another valuable method of note-taking is called Venn’s diagrams, which is named after British philosopher John Venn (1834-1923). This method consists of two or more circles that intersect or overlap to show the common nature of two different classes of things, or to show the similarities and differences between two or three topics. As shown in figure (4), Wilson (2004) illustrates that “the method is made of two or three over lapping circles,”

, The simple example illustrated in figure (4) shows that where the two circles are enclosed, this means that the two items are very similar, and where the items are in the outer parts of the two circles, this indicates that the items are quite dissimilar. As displayed in figure (4) the ability to show the relationships between related concepts is regarded as one strength of Venn’s method. Therefore, Venn’s diagrams can be used by a note – taker who is looking for taking notes on the basis of similarities and differences. For instance, Wilson (2004) suggests that Venn’s diagrams could be used by researchers who are interested in literary language; such as: to show similarities and differences in poems, characters, and so forth.

Questions section Notes section Date

Comments section

Figure (3): An Example of Cornell’s Method Format

Source: Andreatta, (2009): “Navigating the research university: A guide for first- year tudents”

Fig. (4) An Example of Venn’s Diagrams of Two Items

Source: Clifford, (2007): “the middle school writing toolkit: differentiated in instructions across the content areas”

However, it is worth mentioning that one disadvantage of Venn’s diagrams as criticized by Charles (2006) who claims that, Venn’s diagrams are limited to presenting the amount of information, as this method cannot compare more than four items. Preferably, Charles believes that, T- charts are far better for highlighting the contrasting characteristic than Venn’s diagrams, which is ideally suited for stressing the similarities of the topic being compared. Table (1) below, is provided to show the contrasted characteristics of Venn’s diagrams with T-chart.

Table (1): Advantages and Disadvantages of Venn’s Diagrams Compared with the T- charts method

Venn’s diagrams T- charts
  1. Tend to get messy
 Neatly organized;
  1. Used for comparing and contrasting
 Used for comparing and contrasting;
  1. Show overlapping similarities between topics
 Show direct contrast between certain characteristics;
  1. Drawn with two or more large over lapping circles
 Drawn by making a big lower case ‘t’ with parallel horizontal lines drawn a cross it;
  1. Can only neatly handle up to three topics
 Numerous topics can be compared.

Source: Charles, (2006): “Get to the top of the Class: How to succeed in high school”

2.4 The Most Common Note – taking Techniques

Information may appears in a written a text by completely three different ways: Firstly, by summarizing the main ideas in a source, and secondly, by paraphrasing a part or a whole of a source’s page, or thirdly, by quoting the author’s ideas directly word by word.

In general, through all these three methods (i.e. summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting), the borrowed information must be attributed to the original author according to the conventions of a particular reference system, which is accepted by the authority of an academic institution, and should be maintained throughout a written text. Henceforward, the three methods are discussed in greater details below:

2.4.1 Summarizing and Paraphrasing Note- taking Techniques

Summarizing and paraphrasing are considered the most effective and valuable tools in taking notes. While, a summary is based primarily on extracting the main ideas of a text, paraphrasing is used alternatively to replace the author’s words with one’s own words. The two terms are explored in-depth in the following sections:

2.4.1.1Summarizing a text

Traditionally, a ‘summary’ is also known as, ‘abstract’, ‘précis’, ‘digest’, ‘synopsis’, and ‘abridgement’. All these terms are equivalent for the word ‘summary’. The purpose of the summary revolves around extracting the main ideas from a longer piece of writing. Sometimes, a summary can be as short as a single sentence or a paragraph. In accordance with this traditional understanding of the concept ‘summary’, Rizvi (2005), defines a summary as “a brief account of something without details or formalities;” he goes further to assume summarizing as a productive skill, associated with both reading and writing skills. According to Rizvi, in order to summarize a text, some strategies should be adopted to produce an effective summary; therefore, he proposes the following strategies:

  1. Reading strategy: The writer of a summary should completely understand the text, and design a careful reading plan in order to determine the most important ideas, facts, along with the supporting details in a particular text;
  2. Summarizing techniques: This strategy requires that the writer of a summary to make judgments about the rejection; selection, and substitution of some elements in the text, without losing the main gist of the original text.
  3. Outlining and paraphrasing: this strategy requires the ability to manipulate or to reconstruct the original text by replacing the text original words with synonyms and change sentences structures.

Parts of Rizvi’s techniques, namely selection and rejection are illustrated in the following passage. Wherein, the important points have been underlined for writing an effective summary:

Air pollution has been a major threat not only to the quality of environment but also to human health. It has been a major concern of environmental scientists and people who are concerned with the protection of the natural environment. They are particularly worried about the potential of air pollution to threaten human health and environmental quality. In fact, air pollution, if not controlled, can cause serious problems for human being. It was precisely this reason that made scientists and policy makers this seriously about the different ways in which to deal with the problem.

During recent years scientists and policy makers have paid Substantial attention to airborne substances that have the potential to threaten human health and environmental quality. There have been a large number of studies of these pollutants, which have provided enough evidence to show that these pollutants may cause serious problems for human beings. This has resulted in better understanding of health hazards due to airborne substances and has led to the enactment of measures to control them. For example, there have been controls on emissions from automobiles and this has resulted in the control of vehicular pollution. Moreover, controls on industrials that burn gasoline, kerosene, or coal have noticeably improved the quality of the air. Growing effort is being devoted to the isolation of industrial activities and waste dumps that can release complex chemicals into the air and water. In addition, a substantial and relatively effective regulatory structure is in place to control release of radioactivity into the general environment.

However in terms of human health, scientist may have missed the main point that people typically spend 80 to 90 percent of their time indoors. Recent research in air pollution clearly shows that concentrations of many air pollutants can be higher indoors than out. Furthermore, efforts to control outdoor pollution do not check indoor pollution for the simple reason that the factors contributing to indoor pollution are virtually unaffected by controls on outdoor pollution. This perspective is not new just to the public or government officials; even environmental scientists and engineers specializing in air pollution have been startled to discover that the highest personal exposures to combustion emissions occur not in urban smog, but in homes with unvented combustion appliance. Finally, concentrations of organic chemicals in homes and offices are often a hundred or a thousand times higher than they are outdoors and airborne radioactivity in homes is more significantly by far than that released from nuclear power plants.

Total number of words 414

As pointed out in the passage above, the summary process of Rizvi’s strategy was carried out first; through the selection of the important information in the passage, and second, by rejecting all information that is not necessary, or redundant. Thus, as indicated in the text above, this process of selection and rejection is marked-out in the surface structure of the text; by underlining the important information included in the sentences of each paragraph. AS a result, the summary below, illustrates how Rizvi’s summary-strategy contributes effectively to reduce the original text from (411) words to (122) words.

During recent years, scientists and policy makers have paid substantial attention to airborne substances that threaten human health or environmental quality. Controls on emissions from automobiles or industries that burn gasoline, kerosene, or coal have noticeably improved the quality of the air. However, recent research has revealed that concentrations of many pollutants can be higher indoors than outdoors and that the factors contributing to indoors pollution are virtually unaffected by controls on outdoors pollution. The highest personal exposures to combustion emissions occur not in urban smog, but in homes with unvented combustion appliances. Concentrations of organic chemicals in homes and offices are higher than they are outdoors and airborne radioactivity in homes is more significant than that released from nuclear power plant.

Total number of words: 122

The aforementioned original text was consisted of (411) words, and the summarized text is about (122) words, so the original text has been reduced or shortened by about (70.32%). However, by adopting the same techniques, the summarized text could be shortened still further.

Another significant contribution to clarify the concept of ‘summary’ was made by Wormeli (2005) who simply defines summary as, “a clear undistorted distillation of important information from less important.” He adds that a summary is about the main stream of the author’s arguments; consequently, in a summary, there are no places for personal opinions or comments. However, Seidlhofer (1995) proposes to some extent, a different definition; as he believes that summarization is, “the process of distilling the most important information from a set of source to produce a bridged version for a particular user and tasks.” It is obviously that Seidlhofer’s definition concentrates on the process of producing a short written text that is, by filtering-out the main ideas for the benefits of specific user’s needs.

2.4.1.2 Advantages of Summaries

Although the basic function of summary, as commonly believed is to reduce or shorten a longer piece of writing; Small and Arnone (2002) have recognized two other benefits of using a summary over the whole text:

  1. Summarizing a text would allow a summary- writer to engage into a deeper cognitive process such as, recognizing the core information dispersed about the whole text.
  2. a good summary should provide sufficient information for a reader in order to help that reader to make an accurate judgment on the whole text.

2.4.1.3 Stages of writing a summary

In what follows, Mani (2001) has suggested the following sequential stages for summarizing a text:

  1. “Documenting exploration,” in this stage, the summarizer should examine the general salient features in the text, so as to getfamiliarwith the text.
  2. “Relevance assessment,” this stage involves the selection from the original text the relevant information, based on the user’s needs
  3. “Summary production,” in this specific stage, the summarizer should carefully commence to reconstruct the selected relevant elements to produce the summary version.
  4. “Revision,” in this stage, Mani emphasizes that the summarizer should engage in two kinds of revisions, the first revision is simply involves revising the summary without a reference to the original text, while the second revision is about revising the summary with the text. In addition to this, the summarizer in this final stage should correct spelling, grammatical, stylistic and other errors to improve the summary’s coherence and conciseness. These items have traditionally been used to assess whether a summary is of good quality or not.

The Mani’s summary stages shown in table (2), are to some extent similar to the strategies of paraphrasing suggested by Bailey (2003), which are based on the following steps: As recommended by Bailey: In the first step, the summarizer should start with identifying the most important elements in the text, in order to exclude minor or inessential details. Then, in the second step, the summarizer should move to condense these crucial elements to produce a shortened written summary.

2.4.1.4 Types of Summaries

From a general point of view, there are several types of summaries, for instance, Nenkova and Mckeown (2011) have identified six types of summaries, which are classified according to their communicative needs, as follows:

  1. “Indicative summary,” Abraham maintains that indicative summary is a very short summary that enables the reader to determine quickly what the summary text is all about. An indicative summary helps the reader to decide whether to read the whole text or not. Indicative summaries are often composed on certain structures such as a table of contents or an index for a book.
  2. “Informative summary,” an obvious difference between an indicative and informative summary, is that an informative summary tends to cover all the important points in the text. Therefore, an informative summary seems to be longer than indicative summary.
  3. “critical and/or evaluative summary,” the primary purpose of an evaluative summary is to catch the original author’s points-of-view on a particular topic.

Table (2): Mani’s Stages of writing a summary

Stage Techniques Results
1-focusing on the basic features of the material to be summarized, Classifying the form and the content of the material, Determination of the type of the abstract to be written, the relative length and degree of difficulty;
2- Identifying the basic information (sometimes done simultaneously with stage 1,)
  1. Searching for cue or function words, phrases, structural headings, and subheadings, and topic sentences.
  2. Expanding the search based on the result of ‘a,’
 Identifying of a representative of relevant information for extraction;
3- Extracting, organizing, reducing the relevant information, Organizing and writing the extracted relevant information into an abstract using a standard format, Preparation of a concise, unified but unedited abstract;
4- Refining the relevant information Editing or reviewing the abstract by the originator or editorial, or technical reviewers, Completion of a good informative or indicative abstract.

Source: Mani, (2001): “Automatic summarization: Natural language processing”

  1. “Generic summary,” are basically dedicated to a particular specialized readership community. Generic summaries are usually written by professionals or experts.
  2. “Query-based summary,” the aim of these types of summary, is to summarize information in the original text that is relevant to specific user’s needs.
  3. “User-focused summary,” in this type, the summary- writer should take account of the user’s interests by emphasizing or highlighting particular points in the original document.

2.4.1.5 Approaches of Writing- Summary

In fact, one of the key approaches of information extraction has been proposed by Mani (2001) who consider ‘summary writing’, as a production or encoding process. However, Mani’s distinctive approach evaluates the summarization process in terms of syntactic and semantic levels, as follows:

  1. “Shallow approach,” Mani points – out that “the shallow approach does not venture beyond a syntactic level of representation.” In other words, the focal point of this approach is merely on the surface structure of the text ( at words, phrases, or sentence levels), he also adds that, the linguistic categories in the original text could be modified and rearranged, in order to make a more concise summary;
  2. “Deeper approach,” as identified by Mani, the deeper approach of summarizing a text focuses on the cognitive representations of the content of the text that is by building a bottom-up approach of semantic linkage from different levels, such as: the word level, sentence level, paragraph level, and text level. Therefore, the summary process is a semantic rather than a syntactic description of the text.

2.4.2 Paraphrasing a text

Longman’s Dictionary of contemporary English (2009) defines paraphrase as, “a statement that expresses something that somebody has written or said”. According to this definition, paraphrase means to repeat something written or spoken by using different words, and results in a new text that is almost quite dissimilar from the original text, but yet retains the same tone and meaning. In this regards, Soles (2005) holds that “… paraphrasing is the process of revising a passage from a written text; so that the revised version is written in the manner and the style of the paraphraser and not the original author.” Whereas, Melcuk (1984) who distinctively states that “the term paraphrase denotes the relation of synonymy between sentences; S1 and S2 are said to be linguistically paraphrased of one another if and only if S1 and S2 , are more or less synonymous.” Therefore, it could be stated that, paraphrasing can be achieved by the development of different types of linguistic resources of EFL students, for example: Increasing EFL students’ possession of a large amount of repertoire of lexical categories.

2.4.2.1 Techniques of paraphrasing a text

Paraphrasing is one of the most powerful tools in taking – notes; besides that, paraphrase as a ‘cognitive process’ reflects how a note – taker comprehends the contents of the original text. In this perspective, Bailey (2003) acknowledges that paraphrase is “a mainstay and prerequisite skill in writing an academic text.” Bailey proceeds to outline three key methods that can help EFL students to make a good paraphrase; and this method could be conducted either,:

  1. By changing the words of the original text;
  2. By changing the words parts of speech, or
  3. By changing the words order.

Bailey’s three techniques of paraphrase are quoted in an extract shown in table (2.8) on the next page:

Table (3): Bailey’s Techniques of Paraphrasing a text

Technique Example of the technique Example in the sentences
  1. Changing the word,,
  2. Change the word class,
  3. Changing the word order,
 Change: studies to research,

Change: societies to civilization,

Change: mud to deposit

Change: ‘Egypt’ (noun) to ‘Egyptian’ (adj.)

Change:“Mountainous regions’ (adj.+N), to:‘in the mountains’ (PP.),

Change: “ancient Egypt collapsed,”to: “the collapse of the Egyptian societies began,”

 Change the sentence of: “ Sleep scientist found that traditional remedies for insomnia such as counting sheep are ineffective” to:

“ Sleep researchers found that established cures for insomnia for instance counting sheep, do not work;”

Change: a “ third group was given no special instructions about going to sleep,” to:

A “third group was no specially instructed about going to sleep;”

Change: “there are many practical applications” to: “ research into insomnia has many practical application.”

Source: Bailey, (2003): “Academic Writing: a hand book for International students”

In the second example below, Soles (2005) provides an effective paraphrased passage accompanied by the original text, which is extracted from Francis Bacon’s book which is entitled “Of marriage and Single Life”.

The original-text:

…He that hath wife and children has given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and greatest merits for public have proceeded from the unmarri- ed or childless men: which both in affection and means have endowed the public.

{From “Of marriage and Single Life” by Francis Bacon}

The Paraphrased text

…Even Francis Bacon, writing some four hundred years ago,

denounced the value of family life, advancing the extraordinary

argument that family actually inhibits success. A man

with a wife and children, wrote Bacon, is less likely to be

productive than the single man; indeed, words and deeds that

have truly benefited society have come from single or childless men.

As indicated in the paraphrased text above, the first two lines make clear that Soles- the author- is paraphrasing Bacon’s text. This is apparent and reflected in the passage above, as the writer of the paraphrased text needs an appropriate reported verb (i. e. denounced), to tell the reader what is the original author of the text (i.e. Bacon) said about the benefits of being a single man.

Despite the use of paraphrasing techniques in a summary writing, paraphrasing does not aim to shorten the length of a text. However, sometimes the length of paraphrased text is almost as long as the original source, this could be due to the fact that in most of paraphrasing applications, a text paraphraser may need to establish a context for the sake of a reader’s understanding the paraphrased text.

To conclude, both summarizing and paraphrasing are central skills in the learning process. On the one hand, summarizing aims to condense information into a suitable length. But, on the flip side paraphrasing attempts to reword someone else’s words into one’s own words.

2.5 Previous Studies

The investigator has reviewed a number of previous studies; they all have been conducted recently in different countries. For example, the first reviewed study is an M. A. dissertation which was conducted by Hanaa, A., (2014), entitled “ The Effect of a Suggested Program Based on Note- Taking Strategy on Enhancing EFL Pre- service Teachers’ Listening and Writing Skills ”, conducted in Fauom University. The principal objectives of Hanaa’s study, were to provide a procedural model on how to use note – taking strategy in enhancing EFL students’ listening and writing skills, and to train EFL students to use their own words depending on an appropriate system for punctuation and abbreviation.. The sample of the study consisted of (80) students enrolled in second year, English department at the faculty of Education, Fauom University. The students were exposed to a systematic training program in order to develop their listening and writing skills. The study found that helping EFL students to recognize how information is structured will help them summarize effectively what they read or hear. The study also found that effective note – taking and summarizing lead to an increase in students’ learning process. The study recommends EFL programs should include various language activities, whether in the undergraduate stage or in the postgraduate one, in order to facilitate conveying the content to the learners.

The second previous study is also an M.A. dissertation which is a case study conducted by Missoum, M. in (2007), at ‘University of Algiers at Bouzare\ah, Faculty of Arts and Language-Department of English’, entitled as “An investigation of the lecture Comprehension &Note- taking strategies of second year students of English at Blida” The main objective of this study was to investigate the EFL Algerian students’ ability in these two important academic skills (i.e. lecture comprehension and notes-taking strategies). The researcher investigated the study subjects’ lecture notes of the second year in the English Department of the University of Blida. Besides, a survey questionnaire was also included to gain insights from the teachers and lecturers of ‘’Listening Comprehension, from the English Department of the University of Blida. The findings of the study indicated that most of the subjects’ notes display an insufficient ability to select the important information content; and also a significant number of the subjects find reading and writing their own notes difficult, because the abbreviations used are not clear to them. The study recommends that content – based instructions should include more pedagogical training tasks that might enable students of English to learn these academic skills better.

The third consulted study is a PhD thesis entitled “The Impact of Note – Taking in Counseling”, which was conducted by Linglo, C. in (2013). The main objective of the study was to investigate whether note – taking is constructive for Counselors, in terms of recall the content of the patient’s session- interview, and the clinical judgments accuracy. The sample of this study consisted of (13) students who enrolled in the course “Micro – Counseling” which was a required course in the Master’s level of counseling program. The study found some evidences showing that counselors do not take notes in sessions with observable organization and enough content. Therefore, the study concluded that novice counselors do not benefits from their rough notes – taking to improve their recall and clinical judgments .The researcher suggests counselor’s educators to develop strategies to create complete notes, he also suggest future studies to recruit experienced counselors as participants to verify the findings of the current study.

The fourth previous study which entitled “Impact of Cornell Note – taking Method Instruction on Grammar Learning of Iranian EFL Learners,” was recently conducted at Hakim Sabzevari University- Iran by Davoudi, M. in (2015). The study sought to investigate the effectiveness of Cornell note – taking strategy in teaching EFL Iranian students’ language grammar learning. The sample consisted of 70 intermediate EFL students, 44 males and 26 females, formed two groups,( i.e. experiment group and controlled group). Then, the two groups were exposed to grammar instruction. The statistical results of this study revealed that, the experimental group had outperformed the control group. Then, with respect to the “variable gender” no significant difference was observed between the two groups. The study recommends further studies to explore the effect of Cornell notes on others skills such as reading skill and others language feature namely vocabulary learning.

The fifth reviewed study is a PhD thesis which was conducted by Chimbganda, A., in (2006), entitled as “A study of the Summarization Strategies used by ESL First Year Science Students at the University of Botswana.”. The main objectives of this study were to discover the specific actions, behavior, steps or techniques that first year science students, at the University of Botswana use when processing information in order to accomplish their given tasks. Nine students (3 high, 3 average and 3 low proficiency students) from one hundred and twenty students were randomly chosen as a sample of this study. They were interviewed in order to find out the kinds of strategies they used in summarizing a scientific text. However, when the data from the questionnaire were cross-checked against the strategies they had used in the actual process of summarizing the text, most of their claims, especially those of the low- proficiency students were not sustained. The findings of this study revealed that some of the high- proficiency students are more capable of selecting the main ideas and the supporting details in the text than low- proficiency students; and many average and low- proficiency students were unable to combine ideas, and to distinguish between the main ideas and the supporting details to produce a coherent summarized version from the original text. However, Chimbganda‘s study recommends a need to further investigate the strategies employed by EFL students for vocabulary learning and usage.

Generally speaking, the above five previous studies bear some relations with the present study. The investigation conducted in each one of these five previous studies was based in some way or another on one dimension of academic literacy skills. For instance, the first four previous studies possess close thematic relations with the present study with regards to the shared topic of note – taking. While the baseline of the first two previous studies involved the strategies of taking notes from listening based – content materials as in the first two previous studies of Hanaa and Missoum. But the bottom line of the present study involves notes – taking strategies to produce concise notes from written texts. Whereas, the third previous investigation of Linglo’s study which partially agrees with the present study in examining the concept of note- taking, but Linglo’s study carried out in a context that entirely different from the context of the present study, as such the former study conducted in non- academic setting that is during patients counseling sessions; which is totally different from the setting of the current study, which is conducted in academic environment and employed to attain educational achievements. While the bottom line of Davoudi’s study which focused on the functional use of a particular type of notes – taking, namely ‘Cornell’s note’ in teaching grammar comprehension at the sentence level, but the present study was interested in utilizing some types of notes – taking techniques to paraphrase or summarize longer reading texts. Hence, the current study focused on notes –taking in general and for different purposes.

Chimbaganda’s study which investigated paraphrase strategies implemented by ESL first year science students, the significant difference in the current study lies in the investigation of notes – taking techniques applied in an EFL educational context with topics focused on educational materials. Thus, the present study differ from the previous one in both the discipline context, and the language register activities.

. 3. Methodology

3.1 The sample

The descriptive analytical method was used to cover in more details the theoretical part of the notes- taking techniques namely; paraphrasing, summarizing. The sample of the study was consisted of two groups: The first group comprised of one hundred ELT Undergraduates (n= 100), these participants were chosen randomly through a fish – bowl- draw technique, from batch (42) at Department of English Language, Faculty of Education – Hantoub, University of Gezira, in WadMadani, Gezira State, Sudan. And, the second group was consisted of (30) EFL University English language teachers, they selected randomly from different Faculties in WadMadani, Gezira State, Sudan.

3.2 Tools of data collection

Concerning the data of the study, two tools of data collection were used: The first tool was a short reading text (Appendix A) designed to elicit information from a sample size of one hundred (100) ELT Undergraduates which was designed to verify the objective number one. Whereas, the second tool was a questionnaire (Appendix B) which was validated by the Jury of three associate professors, distributed among (30) well – experienced University teachers to verify the objective number two.

3.3 Data Analysis

In order to discover ‘to what extent’ the participants of the study have implemented paraphrasing and summarizing techniques, the investigator counted the frequencies and percentages of paraphrasing and summarizing occurred throughout ELT Undergraduates’ tests;. In addition, the data which obtained from the teachers’ questionnaire were also analyzed in frequencies and percentages. And finally, the findings of the study were summarized, and displayed in tables to show the rank occurrences of these paramount notes – taking techniques in the whole corpus of ELT Undergraduates reading tests.

    1. Results of the study

The results obtained from ELT Undergraduates’ written answers, and the University teachers’ responses to questionnaire were presented and discussed below:

4.1 Results of ELT Undergraduates’ use of notes – taking techniques in the reading test:

Table (4) below, display the frequencies and percentages of paraphrasing and summarizing as notes –taking techniques implemented in the ELT Undergraduates’ reading text.

Table (4): ELT Undergraduates implementation of notes – taking techniques in the reading

test

.Techniques Frequency Percentage % Cumulative percent
Paraphrase 11 11% 11%
Summary 18 18% 18%
Copying 71 71% 100%
Total 100

As shown in table (4) above, the analysis of ELT Undergraduates implementation of paraphrase and summary as notes – taking techniques in the reading test, reveal that the total frequencies of paraphrase technique were only (11%) instances, while the frequencies of summarizing the reading passage in the test by were (18%) incidences. Therefore, the low frequency of paraphrasing as a note- taking technique may attest that the participants in the study were not fully equipped with the linguistic resources to enable them to paraphrase the contents of original text into their own words. However, despite the relative higher incidences of the summary compared with paraphrasing technique to achieve the semantic reduction for the original text, which amounted to (18%) cases, the most summarized texts reflected a verbatim account phrases of the original words in the reading test, this may indicate the inabilities of the participants to properly summarize information from the original text.

4.2 Content of the Questionnaire

The questionnaire format contained an introduction, in which the respondents were informed about the purpose of the study. They were asked to express their perspectives to the questionnaire items. Then, the teachers’ responses were rated on a scale of ‘strongly disagree’, ‘disagree’, ‘agree’, and ‘strongly agree’. The main part of the questionnaire consisted of six close – ended items, and one open – ended question which allows the respondents to express themselves freely and provide the investigator with in -depth information from their long teaching experiences

The statement number one and two were both constructed to find out the University teachers’ perceptions on whether ELT Undergraduates are fully aware of paraphrasing and summarizing as notes – taking techniques for extracting information from reading texts. While, the third statement was given to explore if a small number of ELT Undergraduates were mastered- paraphrase and summary as notes – taking techniques when extracted information from reading texts. Whereas, the fourth statement was intended to find out of why EFL postgraduate students relied heavily on direct quotation as a note – taking techniques. The fifth statement aimed to discover if the limited vocabulary is considered the main challenge faced ELT Undergraduates to implement paraphrase technique. The six statement aimed to elicit if laziness is the reason made ELT Undergraduates to relie heavily on copying out the original materials during their reading activities.

4.2.1 University teachers’ responses to the closed ended questions:

In general, the overall University teachers’ responses were analyzed by calculating the percentage ratios of each option made by each respondent. The tables below reflected the total University teachers’ responses to the questionnaire statements that:

1. Many ELT Undergraduates are not fully aware of paraphrase as a technique for taking notes from a reading text.

Table (5) shows that the majority of the respondents (19) i.e. University teachers, forming (63%,) percent have strongly agreed that many ELT undergraduate students are not fully aware of the paraphrase technique for taking notes from reading texts; while, (11) respondents i.e. (37%) percent have chosen the second option. Thus, it becomes clear that there is a vital need to introduce a pedagogical program to heighten ELT undergraduate students’ awareness of paraphrase as a vital note – taking technique for extracted information from a reading text.

Table (5): University teachers’ opinions on Undergraduates’ implementation of paraphrasing technique for taking notes from a reading text

Options Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 19 63% 63.3% 63.3%
Agree 11 37% 36.7% 100%
Undecided 0 0
Disagree 0 0
Strongly disagree 0 0
Total 30 100%

2. The majority of ELT Undergraduates are not fully aware of summarization as a technique for taking -notes from a reading text.

Results of Table (6) displayed below, demonstrated that (21) respondents, constituting (70%), have strongly agreed that “the majority of ELT Undergraduates were not fully aware of summarization as a note – taking technique in their reading activities”; and (9) respondents, forming (30%), have marked the agree option. it is apparent that ELT Undergraduates tend to neglect the value of summarization as one of the most important notes – techniques to extract the main ideas from reading texts. Thus, the results displayed in table (6) consolidated the need to raise ELT Undergraduates’ awareness and appreciation of summary writing as a vital note – taking technique.

Table (6): University teachers’ perspective on ELT Undergraduates’ awareness of summarization technique

Options Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 21 70% 70% 70%
Agree 9 30% 30% 100%
Undecided 0 0
Disagree 0 0
Strongly disagree 0 0
Total 30 100.0% 100. %

3. A few number of ELT Undergraduates are mastered notes – taking techniques when they extract information from reading texts.

The results displayed in table (7) below, revealed that, (15) respondents (i.e.50%) have strongly agreed with the third statement. Whereas, (13) respondents (i.e. 43 %) have chosen agreed option. The undecided option recorded the least frequency as only (2) respondents comprising only (7%) were uncertain if a small number of ELT undergraduate students’’ mastered paraphrase and summary as notes – taking techniques. Based on the information displayed in table (7) below, ELT Undergraduates need to be tutored that paraphrasing and summarizing are indispensable techniques and empowering tools to achieve academic success.

Table (7): A few number of ELT Undergraduates are mastered

notes – taking techniques when they extract information from reading texts

Options Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 15 50% 50% 50%
Agree 13 43% 43.3% 43.3%
Undecided 02 07% 6.7% 100.0%
Disagree 0 0
Strongly disagree 0 0
Total 30 100.0% 100.0% .

4. Most of ELT Undergraduates depend on excessive quotations when they take information from reading texts.

With reference to table (8) below, it is obvious that about (18) respondents comprising the vast majority (60%) of the study subjects have ticked the ‘strongly agree’ option; whereas (12) respondents forming (40%) have chosen ‘agree’ option. Hence, both options displayed in table (8) have clearly confirmed that ELT Undergraduates have a tendency for quoting from sources rather than manipulating the consulted sources by using their cognitive skills. The results shown in the table (8), seems to provide clear evidence that quoting from the texts was the most prevalent technique adopted by ELT Undergraduates when taking information from reading texts, Based on this result, one may suggest that most Undergraduates face some problems in utilizing other notes – taking techniques particularly summarizing and paraphrasing as indispensable tools in conducting a reading assignments.

Table (8): Most of ELT Undergraduates depend on excessive quotations when taking information from reading texts

Options Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 18 60% 60% 40%
Agree 12 40% 40% 100.0%
Undecided 0 0 0
Strongly disagree 0 0 0
Disagree 0 0 0
Total 30 100.0% 100.0%

5- The limited vocabulary is considered the main challenge facing ELT Undergraduates to paraphrase reading materials.

Table (9) below, demonstrates that (15) respondents constituting (50%).have chosen the option ‘strongly agree’; while, (8) respondents forming (27%) have chosen the second option. Whereas, a considerable number of (7) respondents, i.e. (23.4) have expressed their uncertainty with the fifth statement. Therefore, according to the results revealed in table (9), it can be inferred to a greater or lesser degree that many Undergraduates were not able to transfer the author’s ideas to their own words. Thus, the participants’ limited repertoire is considered a major stumbling block to paraphrase the author’s ideas.

Table (9): The limited vocabulary is considered the main challenge facing ELT Undergraduates to paraphrase reading materials

Options Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 15 50% 50% 50%
Agree 08 27% 26.6% 76.6%
Undecided 07 23% 23.4% 100.0%
Strongly disagree 0 0
Disagree 0 0
Total 30 100.0% 100.0%

6. Most of ELT Undergraduates tend to quote because they do not want to exert efforts to paraphrase or summarize reading materials?

Table (10): Most of ELT Undergraduates graduate students tend to quote because they do not want to exert efforts to paraphrase or to summarize reading materials.

Option Frequency Percentage Valid percent Cumulative percent
Strongly agree 07 23% 23.3% 23.3%
Agree 10 33% 33.3% 56.6%
Undecided 13 44% 44.4% 100.0%
Strongly disagree 0 0
Disagree 0 0
Total 30 100.0% 100.0%

From table (10) above, it is apparent that (13) respondents forming the majority (44.4%) have confirmed the ‘undecided’ option; whilst a considerable number of (7), respondents i.e. (23.3%) have marked the option ‘strongly agree’. Besides, (10) respondents, forming (33.3%) have responded with ‘agree option’. The results obtained from table (10) revealed that the vast majority of the participants constituting (44.4%) were uncertain, whether ELT Undergraduates depend heavily on excessive quotations, because of laziness, which prevented them from exerting efforts to implement paraphrasing or summarizing in their reading activities or not. However, it is important that ELT Undergraduates should endeavor to exert efforts to master notes – taking techniques during carrying – out reading assignments.

4.2.2. University teachers’ responses to the open – ended questions:

Q1. What are your suggestions for improving ELT Undergraduates’ notes – taking techniques?

The majority of University teachers (18) i. e., which comprised (60%) of the respondents, they think that the practice of changing the structure of words – order, clustering or. Mapping the main ideas SQ3R as notes – taking techniques, can maximize ELT Undergraduates’ comprehension while reading a texts. Whereas, the remaining respondents (12) i. e., about (40%) believed that familiarized ELT Undergraduates with the technique of coping out from a text, and highlighted key words in a text can provide several benefits for ELT Undergraduates in their reading activities.

5. Discussion of the results in relation to the hypotheses of the study

The study has raised two hypotheses to be tested and verified in relation to the results revealed from the study. The two hypotheses discussed below:

5.1. Testing hypotheses one: Table (1), demonstrated the statistical percentages concerning the overall usage of notes – taking techniques implemented by the ELT Undergraduates across their reading activities. Thus, the results obtained from table (1) revealed the low frequency of each technique as a paraphrase technique with the least occurrences instances which occurred at only (11%) incidences, summary with (18%), and copying out from a text, which rated with a relatively a larger amount of frequency (71%). Thereofore, these results strongly consolidates the study’s hypothesis that, “The majority of ELT Undergraduates do not employ paraphrasing and summarizing as notes – taking techniques in reading activities.”

5.2 Testing hypothesis two: The verification of the hypothesis two is based on the University teachers’ response to the open – ended question, who confirmed that the practice of changing the structure of ‘words – order’, ‘clustering or mapping the main ideas’, in addition to ‘copying – out’ from a text can maximize ELT Undergraduates’ comprehension while they reading a texts. Thus, these suggestions provided by University teachers to improve ELT Undergraduates notes – taking techniques have strongly supported that “a number of techniques can be suggested to solve ELT Undergraduates’ notes – taking problems.

6. Conclusion and recommendations

This study investigated ELT Undergraduates’ implementation of notes – taking techniques in the reading activities. One hundred (n =100) ELT Undergraduates from batch (42), at the Department of English Language were chosen as a sample for the study. Two tools of data collection were used. The first tool was a reading test designed to elicit information from ELT Undergraduates. Whereas, the second tool was a questionnaire which was distributed among a sample consisted of (30) University teachers, who were chosen from two Universities, namely University of Holy Quran, Faculty of Education in WadMadani, and University of Gezira, Faculty of Education – Hantoub, Gezira states, Sudan. The data were manually analyzed using descriptive statistics, and then interpreted in terms of frequency and percentages. Finally, the results were presented and discussed in relation to the hypothesis of the study.

6.1. Main findings

i-. ELT Undergraduates demonstrate a remarkable underuse to implement paraphrasing with only (11%), and summarizing (18%), as the least frequent notes – taking techniques for extracting information from the reading test,

ii. ELT Undergraduates demonstrate a clear tendency to copying – out from a text which occur at a higher frequency of (71%) incidences, which regarded as a solely note – taking technique for administering the reading test

iii-. More than two thirds of University teachers (18), i. e., comprised (60%) of the respondents stated the practice of changing the structure of ‘words – order’, ‘clustering or mapping the main ideas’, in addition to SQ3R can maximize ELT Undergraduates’ comprehension of reading texts.

6.2. Recommendations

Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations are provided:

  1. It is recommended that an English Language course should provide ELT Undergraduates with intensive and extensive reading practice activities in organizing information into smaller units so as to be extracted by different types of notes – taking techniques.
  2. University teachers should impart the concepts of mapping and clustering the main ideas, as a creative technique to increase ELT Undergraduates word – power.

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