MAKING SENSE OF RESEARCH: UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING ACADEMIC SUMMARIES

Abstract

Reading and understanding authentic research is a fundamental skill in preparing MA students for writing academic essays, exam papers and MA theses. However, if they have not mastered the simpler skills of summarising, less demanding in terms of content and structure texts, it would be more difficult for them to work with academic discourse characterised by higher information density and complex reasoning and argumentation. The paper deals with some problems MA students experience in understanding academic research articles in English and summarising their main points. The analysis of students’ summaries reveals problems related to differentiating between essential and less significant information, making sense of empirical data, understanding author’s ideas and implications. Students experienced difficulties in referencing, paraphrasing, reformulating and reducing the text in the summary. The findings of the study could be used for improving instruction to target identified issues.

Keywords

• summary
• research
• academic
• ma students
• problems