Relationship Between Perception and Performance on an L1 Summary Writing Task of an L2 Text: A Case Study of Japanese EFL University Students

抄録

Summary writing in the first language (L1) of a text written in the second language (L2) has been used to measure L2 reading comprehension. A variety of scoring criteria for the summary writing task have been suggested and employed in previous studies, examinations, and classroom assessments. An inconsistency in the scoring may lead to misperceptions among test-takers about the intended performance of the summary task. Therefore, the present study examined the perceptions of summary writing among Japanese English as foreign language (EFL) university students, and the relationship between performance and the perceived appropriateness of the summary writing task. A total of 68 students participated in the study. They read an English (i.e., L2) passage and summarized it in Japanese (i.e., L1). Then, they answered a questionnaire about the perceived appropriateness of the scoring criteria for the summary writing task. The results showed that Japanese EFL university students judged that the amount of important information should be adopted as the scoring criteria of the task. However, their perceptions did not influence their performance. These findings suggest that the students should be made aware of the ideal performance criteria, so that they can work on a summary writing task with correct perceptions of the intended performance.