Some of the objectives of teachers in class are related to learning-teaching process. One of the important points emphasized in relation to learning-teaching process is to teach students how to learn by making them aware of the possible strategies and techniques to be employed during the process. Therefore, teachers should be informed about learning-teaching strategies and should know how to personally implement them in learning process. Learning   strategies     and    competencies    needed   to implement them should be imparted to pre-service teachers during their teacher training education because the skills and knowledge acquired during teacher training education will have great impacts on their future professional practices. Thus, the study aimed to determine the extent to which the pre-service teachers can make use of one of the learning strategies, summarizing strategy. In formal education institutions, after  acquiring reading  and  writing skills,  children  learn much information from published materials. Therefore, the fundamental skill required for the formal learning is reading comprehension. Reading comprehension means deriving correct and precise meaning from a text suitable for the level of the student.

However, reading comprehension skill is a skill that cannot be developed well enough in our children (Tekin, 1980). This may partly be because of the arrangement of reading materials and inadequate instruction of learning strategies. Bloom (1979) states that on the basis of school learning lays the reading comprehension skill of students. Research on reading comprehension reports that there are some techniques contributing to the development of reading comprehension skill and these techniques are teachable (Pressley et al., 1989; Khoshsima and Rezaeian-Tiyar, 2014). One of these techniques is summarizing what we have read.

Summarizing can be defined as creating a construct including the main gist of the text and representing the important sentence structures in the text. During the process of summarizing, unimportant points are excluded from the general structure and a macro structure making up the core emerges. Thus, making students acquire summarizing skill means helping them to understand what they read to a great extent (Brown et al., 1983; Ç?kr?kç?, 2008; Erdem, 2012; Karatay and Okur, 2012). Summarizing also benefits the teacher “ it provides evidence of the student’s ability to select important information, is an informal indicator of comprehension, and reveals a student’s ability to prioritize and sequence” (Westby et al., 2010).

Summarizing is a process requiring obeying some certain rules. Brown and Day (1983) analyzed written summaries of children and adults by employing summarizing model proposed by Kintsch and Van Dijk (1978). At the end of their analysis, they set up six summarizing rules (Cited in Garner and Hahn, 1985). These are: Shortening the given information in the form of a list, including only one of the repeated sentences into the summary, deleting unimportant sentences, incorpo-rating topic sentences into the summary and if there is no topic sentence, then, generating a topic sentence. These rules used to construct the large-scale structure of the text have been used in summary writing and laid the ground of many studies (Çak?r, 1995; Ç?kr?kç? 2008; Karatay and Okur, 2012).

As students having the skill of summarizing can learn and retain informative texts better, this skill needs to be taught to students at school by teachers. Hence, teachers should assume an important role for this to happen. For this purpose, the first thing to be done is to determine the extent to which pre-service teachers possess summary-zing skill.

Therefore, the present study sought answers to the following questions: What is the summarizing skill level of the pre-service Turkish Language and Literature teachers? Which of the summarizing rules are difficult to apply for the pre-service teachers?

Model of study

In the study, the survey model was used. A survey study aims to reveal the existing states and the things experienced by describing and explaning them (Sönmez and Alacap?nar, 2011).

Study group

The study group of the present study consists of 47 students having graduated from the departments of Turkish Language and Literature of different universities in Turkey and attending the program of “Pedagogic Formation Course” at Mu?la S?tk? Koçman University in 2014. Out of the participants, 32 are females and 15 are males. The participants of the study are the graduates of Turkish Language and Literature and they had to participate in a pedagogic formation course lasting for two terms in order to be able to get their pedagogic formation certificate necessary to be a teacher.

Data collection instruments

Study material. In order to be used in the present study, an informative and authentic text entitled “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” (?ahin, 1983) was selected. The text is made up of 42 sentences and 526 words and related to psychology. As the participants were expected to select the sentences to be included in the summary answer form, each sentence of the text was enumerated.  

Summary Answer Form (SAF): A form consisting of as many blanks as the number of sentences in the text (there are 42 sentences in the text) was developed so that the students could indicate which sentences they would include in their summary by writing the numbers put in front of the sentences in this form. The pre-service teachers wrote only the numbers of the sentences to be included in their summaries in this form. In this way, the students selected the sentences to make up their summaries. In order to determine the score taken by each participant at the end of this process, SAK was used. These scores were considered to be their summary scores.

Summary Answer Key (SAK). In order to be able to score the summary answer forms of the participants, summary answer key was developed. As an authentic text was used in the study, it was not possible to implement all the summarizing rules to the text. For the development of SAK, these stages were followed. The researcher and two experts of educational programs and instruction wrote their own summaries by using the summarizing rules. In this way, it was determined which rule should be used where (in which paragraph) and how many times and what kind of a summary would emerge. The text was analyzed in line with the summarizing rules. As a result of the text analysis, it was revealed that the most frequently used deleting rule is “deleting repeated information” (10 times) and it is followed by “deleting unimportant information” (6 times) and “deleting unrelated information” (2 times) and the most frequently used selection rule is “selecting important information” (7 times) and “selecting the main idea sentence” (7 times).  For each correct use of each summarizing rule, 1 point was given and for each incorrect or no use of each summarizing rule, 0 point was given. Thus, the highest score to be taken was determined to be 32. Within the framework of these criteria, the summary answer key was developed. The students’ summary answer forms were scored through the summary answer key. In order to establish the reliability of the summary scores, the summary response forms were scored by  an   independent  rater  and  then  the  consistency  of summary scores was evaluated. For the validity of SAK, expert opinion was sought. Thus, SAK was developed considering the opinions of the researcher and two experts of educational programs and instruction. The sentences on which no agreement was reached were not included in the summary.

Data analysis   

The text used in the present study is suitable for summarizing by using only selection and deleting rules. Therefore, the students received 1point from the correct use of these rules and 0 point from the incorrect use of these rules. For instance, if a student decided that the 5^th sentence in the text is a sentence including important information and the decided to include it in his/her summary and then marked it in his/her summary answer form, he/she was given 1 point. If he/she could not determine this sentence and leave the answer form empty or he determined the 6^th sentence and marked it in his/her summary answer form, then he/she was given 0 point. By calculating the correct markings of each student in the summary answer form, their summary scores were found. Arithmetic means of the scores were calculated. In the analysis of the data, arithmetic means, standard deviations and percentages were used.

In order to determine which summary rule was found to be difficult to the students to apply, the students’ summary answer forms were analyzed and application percentages of the rules were found. For this purpose, the number of correct use of each rule was found from the students’ summary answer forms. In this way, raw score taken by each student from the use of each rule was calculated. Then the usage mean of each rule was calculated. In order to determine the application ratio of the summarizing rules, absolute achievement percentages of the groups were calculated. For this, usage mean of each rule was divided into the highest score to be taken from the application of the rule (Turgut, 1985). For instance, 1^st rule (deletion of repeated information) could be used ten times in the whole text. Thus, the highest score to be taken from this rule is 10. As a result of the analysis of each student’s summary answer form according to SAK, the number of correct use of the 1^st rule in the group was determined. Then, the total number of correct uses of 1^st rule was divided into the number of the students in the group and in this way, usage ratio of the 1^st rule was calculated (X=5, 57). Absolute achievement percentages of the groups related to the 1^st rule were calculated by dividing group mean into the highest score to be taken (10). This value was calculated to be (5, 57 / 10) X100 = 56 for the 1^st rule.

Stages of the application

The pre-service teachers were handed out the text and the SAF. They were asked to mark the SAF according to this instruction: “Read the following text each sentence of which is enumerated carefully. When you want to write the summary of this text, which sentences do you include in your summary? Which ones do you exclude? Reexamine the text and determine the sentences you find suitable to include in your summary. Mark the number in front of the sentence you determine in the SAF.” Thus, each student determined the sentences to be included in their summaries and filled in the SAF. Then, each summary answer form was scored by comparing with the SAK. In this way, the students’ scores taken from the SAK were calculated. 

The first question of the present research is “What is the summarizing skill level of the pre-service   Turkish Language and Literature teachers?” To find an answer to this question, arithmetic means and standard deviations of the students’ summary scores were calculated. As can be seen in Table 1 below, summary mean score was approximately calculated to be X: 19; and standard deviation was approximately calculated to be Sd: 3. The students who were one standard deviation under and over the summary mean score (16; 22) were defined as “medium”, those who were above this limit (23; 28) were defined as “high” those who were under it (14; 15) were defined as “low”. Descriptive statistics related to the pre-service teachers’ summary scores are presented in Table 1. 

As can be seen in Table 1, in general, the pre-service teachers’ summary skill level is “medium” because summary scores of 79% of the pre-service teachers are in the score range of 16-22; that is, “medium”.  The pre-service teachers exhibited a medium level summarizing performance in the current study. Only 17% of the pre-service teachers’ summarizing skill level is “High”. The summarizing scores of these pre-service teachers were calculated to be in the score range of 23-28. Finally only 4% of the participants’ summarizing skill level is “low”. Given that the maximum summary score is 32, nearly 96% of the students got medium or higher scores (16-28).

Another question posed by the present study is “Which of the summarizing rules are difficult to apply for the pre-service teachers?”  With this question, it was intended to determine which of the summarizing rules the pre-service teachers find difficult to apply. For this purpose, the pre-service teachers’ rule application percentages were calculated by analyzing their SAFs. Table 2 shows the rule application ratios of the pre-service teachers.

As can be seen in Table 2, the correct application ratios of the rules are as follows:  select main idea sentence 68, delete unimportant information 63%, delete irrelevant information 60%, select important information 58%, delete repeated information and only include one of them in the summary 56%. The pre-service teachers applied the rule “select the main idea sentence” to the greatest extent. The summary rule having the lowest implementation ratio is “delete the repeated information”. It was observed that the application ratio of all the rules is over 50%. 

The results of the study reveal that the pre-service Turkish Language and Literature teachers’ summarizing level is “medium”. This can be seen as a natural result of the implementation of summarizing rules at a medium level. This finding concurs with the study of Karatay and Okur (2012) stating that the pre-service Turkish Language teachers’ rate of correct implementation of summary rules is medium for both informative and narrative texts.  In  their  study,  Bulut  and  Akyol  (2014) found that the mean score taken by the pre-service classroom teachers from their summaries of informative texts is 24.51 out of maximum score 40, which means that they also have medium level of summarizing skill. In the present study, 79% of the participants were found to have exhibited a medium level summarizing performance. This finding indicates that the pre-service teachers’ summarizing skills, though not adequate, are promising for their future professional career.

The rule most successfully implemented by the pre-service teachers is “select the main idea sentence” from the group of “selection”. This finding concurs with the study of Susar and Akkaya (2009), highlighting that the students are successful in stating the main idea.  One of the reasons for the pre-service teachers’ high application ratio of “select the main idea sentence” may be because they, starting from elementary school, practiced this rule especially in Turkish Language courses at every stage of schooling. The second most successfully implemented summarizing rule is “delete the unimportant information” from the group of “deletion”. Similar finding has been reported by much research. Brown and Day (1983) reported that the most successfully implemented summarizing rule is “delete the unimportant information” from the group of “deletion”. Eyüp et al. (2012) stated that high majority of the last-year students of an education faculty were able to detect unimportant information and did not include it in their summaries. Deneme (2009) conducted a study to investigate the pre-service English Language teachers’ preferences for the use of summarizing strategies and found that all of the students were able to delete unimportant information in the original text and did not include it in their summaries. Erdem (2012) reported that the pre-service Turkish Language and Literature teachers agreed with the item “I can delete the unimportant information in the original text and do not include it in my summary” to a great extent (79%).  

The third most successfully implemented summarizing rule is “delete the irrelevant information” from the group of “deletion”. This may be because this rule requires an operation similar to the one required by the rule of “delete the unimportant information”. Both unimportant and irrelevant sentences spoil the coherence and cohesion; they are the most noticeable sentences.

In the present study, a rule from “deletion” group, “delete the repeated information and include only one in the summary” was found to be used correctly at the ratio of 56%. This rule seems to be the most difficult rule to be implemented by the pre-service teachers. The performance of the pre-service teachers in terms of applying the rule of the selection of one of the repeated pieces of information and including it in the summary is relatively lower. When the students’ summary answer forms were examined, it was observed that the pre-service teachers had difficulty in including one of the repeated sentences in their summaries because they viewed them too unimportant to include in their summaries. However, these sentences are important sentences to be included in the summaries; yet, as they are repetition of each other, only one of them should be included in the summary.  In a similar manner, the pre-service teachers’ application ratio of the rule of selection of the important information is relatively low (58%). Hahn and Garner (1985) conducted a study on students’ summarizing skills and concluded that the students select the information related to their personal interest rather than the most important information in the text. Winograd (1984) reported that though eight grade students know that they need to select the important information while summarizing, they have difficulties in selecting them (cited in Hahn and Garner). The rules that “include one of the repeated sentences in the summary” and “include important information in the summary” are the basic rules of the summarizing process. In fact, these two rules are related to each other because detection of the sentences repeating each other means considering one of them important enough to include in the summary. In the present study, application ratios of these two rules are close to each other and this is a consistent finding indicating this relationship.

The rules that the pr-service teachers were the most successful to apply were “select the main idea sentence” and “delete the unimportant information”. This finding shows that the pre-service teachers generated their summaries by using these two rules that they can easily and successfully implement. The performance of the pre-service teachers in terms of applying the rule of the selection of one of the repeated sentences and including it in the summary is relatively lower. This shows that the pre-service teachers need more training in the application of the rules of “include one of the repeated sentences in the summary” and “differentiate important information from unimportant information” particularly within the context of Language and Literature courses.

As a conclusion, 79% of the participants were found to have exhibited a medium level summarizing performance. The course most relevant to the teaching of summarizing rules is Turkish Language and Literature. Medium level of summarizing skill should not be considered enough for the pre-service teachers who will teach this course. The pre-service teachers’ high level of summarizing skill will have positive impacts on their prospective students’ summarizing skills. Summarizing and reading comprehension skills are the key to success in all courses. Thus, greater importance should be attached to the teaching of summarizing rules to pre-service teachers. In this regard, it would be useful to revise the teaching programs of elementary and secondary schools and universities.

And such training may include different types of texts such as narration or a text related to their subject area. In the current study, the summary of the text was generated by conducting the operations of selecting and deleting the sentences from the original text. This is a limitation of the study. Future research may ask participants to write their summaries with their own sentences and these summaries can be evaluated.

The author has not declared any conflict of interests.

The present study was presented as an oral presentation in VII International Symposium of Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language.