TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE THROUGH TEXTUAL GENRES: THE SUMMARY AS AN ACTIVITY OF RETEXTUALIZATION

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate the conceptions of summary presented by some university students enrolled in an English language course, as well as to verify how those students produced this genre, through retextualization. In order to do so, we used a questionnaire with a set of questions related to the summary structure, and analyzed the participants’ productions of summaries in two distinct moments: before and after the use of a didactic sequence which taught that text genre systematically. The theoretical foundations of this work are based on the studies of scholars such as Dell’Isola (2007) and Marcuschi (2005a), concerning retextualization, as well as on a socio-discursive interactionist view of genres. The results indicate that the use of the didactic sequence was beneficial for the students regarding their summary productions, as there was improvement in their writing in some aspects. Nevertheless, concerning the copies of extracts from the basic text and the marks of authorship, the participants presented some issues which deserve further attention.

Keywords

• Textual genres
• Summary
• English teaching
• Retextualization