Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol 13, No 6 (2020)

Individual Styles of Summary Writing: Approaches to Styles Description and Diagnostics

Elena Tareva, Boris Tarev

Abstract


 

Introduction. The article represents the analysis of individual styles of summary writing with the aim to describe them, and verify the methods of their defining (diagnosis). The purpose of the paper is to determine the scientific status, and also to substantiate the pragmatic function of individual summary writing styles in order to improve the quality of students' preparation for this type of written activity in the process of learning foreign languages. The main goal of the authors is to prove that the individual style of summary writing is conditioned by socio-cultural and personal factors that influence the ability to perceive and process the source text and generate a secondary text – a summary. Materials and methods. As a methodological basis, the authors rely on the learner-centered and intercultural approaches to teaching. The solution of research problems was ensured through the use of a set of interrelated methods: theoretical (analysis of literature, of available domestic and foreign experience), general scientific (classification, differentiation, comparison, generalization), as well as empirical (experimental work, content analysis of activity products - summaries, statistical data processing). The material for research is summaries which are regarded as products of written speech by Russian-speaking and English-speaking students of an economics university. Results. The research identifies and characterizes lingvocognitive styles of summary writing specific for English and Russian language speakers, that reflect nationally and personally conditioned approaches to analytical and synthetic processing of information. We prove experimentally and statistically reliably the fact that Russian-speaking students are characterized by differentiating, scanning style of summary writing, while English-speaking students - by integrating, fragmenting style of summary writing. The systematization of the results of the summaries’ content analysis has demonstrated the use by the learners of their personal experience for perception, processing of the source text and in the generation of the text of a summary. Conclusions. The obtained results help to optimize the process of preparing students for writing summaries in the conditions of intercultural communication, taking into account the individual style of summary writing.