Summaries Writing to Enhance Reading Comprehension: Systematic Literature Review from 2014 to 2021

Abstract

Summarizing strategy is one of the strategies used to develop reading comprehension; however, there is a dearth of literature reviews discussing this important subject. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of the summarizing strategies used to enhance reading comprehension by EFL students. In addition, the study also identified the factors that influenced the success of writing a summary. A total of 3,178 raw articles were found in journals indexed by Scopus.com and Eric.ed.gov between 2014-2021. After the verification stage, 35 articles were used in this systematic review. The results of the study show that experimentation can positively influence and improve the results of summary writing and reading comprehension. This review found three types of summary writing strategies: use of a single strategy; use of the integration of 2 or more strategies; comparison of strategies in summary writing or reading comprehension. The results found that most of the studies on summarizing stated the influence of vocabulary knowledge, text structure awareness and prior knowledge on summary writing. The study recommends the use of ICT tools and online exercises to familiarize students with new techniques of summary writing. Teachers and peers should also provide intelligent feedback to improve summary writing.