The role of transformation in summary writing of Chinese EFL learners

Abstract

This study examines the role of transformation in summary writing. Think-aloud protocols of seven learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from a Chinese university were collected and analyzed. The protocols were coded into various strategies of which transformation constituted an import ant part serving three primary purposes: developing framework, selecting, and reformulating. Features of transformation operations and patterns of the use of these strategies were explored across participants, who were observed to conduct extensive operations of information transfer from the source text to their writing using various transformation strategies. Overall, the participants with higher language proficiency used more transformation strategies and were awarded higher summary scores than their less proficient peers. This study provides some potentially helpful insights into transformation in summary writing as well as other related academic writing tasks, holding implications for defining the construct and designing the task of summary writing as well as for classroom teaching.