Abstract

Summary writing has been considered an important aspect of academic writing. However, writing summaries can be a challenging task for the majority of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Research into teaching summary writing has focused on different processes to teach EFL learners. The present study adopted two methods – keyword and question generation – to guide Taiwanese university students in writing summaries in English. To decrease the students’ apprehension resulting from the difficulties in writing summaries, portfolios were used as a vehicle to help the students collect and reflect on the articles they read and the summaries they wrote. This paper investigated how much keyword methods and question generation helped Taiwanese EFL university students improve their English summary writing. The data showed that, with the help of keywords and question generation, the two approaches helped the majority of the participants increase their English reading and summary writing abilities.

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