La construcción de itinerarios de aprendizaje pertinentes que

It has been shown in the reviewed literature that summary writing as one of the aspects tested in English language examinations at both internal and external examinations has not received much attention in terms of pedagogy. Most of the studies reviewed in Nigeria and globally on the effects of instructional strategies on students‘ learning outcomes in summary writing have shown the dominance of teacher-centred strategies. Most of these strategies did not take into account students‘

prior knowledge or schemata, the need for practice sessions and corrective feedback during the process of instruction. The review of literature has shown that one of the most important factors affecting the teaching and learning process is learners‘ prior knowledge or what the learners have already learned.

For effective learning to occur, the learners must be actively involved in order to relate the new body of knowledge to what they have previously been taught, engage in self-regulated practice sessions and receive corrective feedbacks. Also, the nature and objectives of summary writing, reading-writing connection in summary writing teaching and the importance of summary writing in research, note taking or

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personal study were examined. Therefore, summary writing is a tool for effective reading, studying, note taking and examination writing. It effectively combines the reading and writing skills of the English language and it stresses the need for comprehension which is the goal of any language.

The effects of several strategies have been examined on students‘ learning outcomes in summary writing. These strategies have been found to enhance the attitude of students towards learning of summary writing and improve achievement in both internal and external examinations. Instructional strategies such as Componential and Rhetorical, Literature Circle and Semantic Mapping, Scaffolding and Context Cueing, were examined extensively. In the review of literature, explicit and generative instructional strategies have been shown to be effective in teaching of skills and for the purpose of remedial instruction. These two strategies could make teaching and learning of summary writing to be practical, interesting, meaningful, and to aid success in this aspect of the subject in internal and external examinations. The steps involved in Explicit Instructional Strategy such as explanation, modelling, guided practice, independent practice and closure and their benefits were also reviewed.

Similarly, the steps involved in Generative Instructional Strategy such as introduction, focus, activity, discussion and application were also discussed.

Further still, effects of gender and cognitive style on students‘ achievement in and attitude to English in general and summary writing in particular were discussed in the reviewed studies. Also, students‘ achievement in summary writing has been linked to their cognitive style which plays a vital role in the way they read, process, comprehend and summarise any given text or summary passage. An individual‘s cognitive style is his or her most preferred and consistent channel of receiving, processing, analysing and making use of any information (text or verbal). Literature has established that there are different dimensions of cognitive style, the effect of the global/analytic cognitive style on students‘ achievement in and attitude to learning was examined and found to be significant. Global learners consider the whole or ‗big picture‘ while analytic learners are linear or sequential in their approach to information processing. Reviewed literature shows that cognitive style could influence learning, retention, comprehension and scholastic attainment. However, there are conflicting results as to which of global and analytic cognitive style is more effective. Hence there is a need for further studies in this area.

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Similarly, the effect of gender on students‘ learning outcomes in English language in general and summary writing in particular has been examined in different studies, but the outcome of these studies have produced conflicting results. Findings of some studies showed that females performed better than their male counterparts while others revealed that there was no significant difference between the attitude and achievement of both males and females in language learning. In other studies, males were reported to have performed better than females especially in language learning tasks. Therefore, the actual effect of gender on students‘ achievement and attitude to language learning remain inconclusive. Students‘ attitude deals with their general disposition and level of like or dislike towards a subject or anything. Attitude has been confirmed to have significant effect on student‘s achievement in summary writing. Therefore, efforts must be made to reinforce positive attitude towards learning of summary writing in order to improve student‘s achievement in this aspect of English language.

In conclusion, it has been revealed in the reviewed literature that most of the studies reviewed were carried out in other aspects of English such as composition, comprehension, oral English etc in Nigeria and some foreign countries. Also, some of the other studies focused on science-based disciplines and their research procedures are often too costly to implement in a developing country like Nigeria. More importantly, most of the studies did not stress the importance of students‘ prior knowledge, self-regulated practice sessions and corrective feedback during the process of instruction which can only be enhanced by explicit and generative instructions. Many of the strategies reviewed in literature did not consider these important aspects which are necessary in the development of efficient, active and independent learners. Therefore, this study tried to fill the gaps observed in research by examining the effects of explicit and generative instructional strategies on student‘s achievement in and attitude towards summary writing.

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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research design and procedure for the study. It explains the population, research instruments, validity and reliability of research instruments, procedure for data collection and the method of data analysis.