STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS IN WRITING SUMMARY

(A study conducted to English Department students class D academic year 2012)

JOURNAL

Written by:
EKO PURNOMO
NIM. 321 412 070

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
LETTERS AND CULTURE FACULTY
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI GORONTALO
2016
 ABSTRACT

Eko Purnomo, 2016. Students’ Problem in Writing Summary. English Department,

Letters and Culture Faculty, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo. Advisor (1) Sri Agriyanti
Mestari S.Pd, M.Ed. TESOL. Advisor (2) Dewi Dama S.Pd, M.Ed.

Writing summary is important skill in students’ learning. It can help students to improve their
writing ability. It also can make the students understand the text from the book or any other
sources easily. Thus, summary is highly essential and necessary skill in academic field.
Students need to master this skill. Otherwise, it can be a problem if the students did not have
competence in this skill. This study is aimed to investigate students’ problem in writing
summary. As a qualitative research, the data were obtained from interview and documentation.
This study was conducted to six students of English Department class D academic year 2012.
The researcher discovers five problems faced by students in writing summary, they are; (1)
students’ difficulties in understanding text source, (2) lack of knowledge about the procedures
of writing summary, (3) lack of feedback from the lecturer who ask them to write summary,
(4) time for summary writing and (5) students laziness. Those findings might be useful both
for students and teachers, especially for those who are in favor to use summary as a teaching
technique.

Keywords: Problems, Writing Summary

Introduction
In learning process, teachers have an important role to help the students improving their
knowledge about the course. As argued, One of the ways for the techer to help their students
understand the lesson is inducing summary as a teaching technique. Having say this, the
students are required intensively to write summary. It is written by the students before or
after teacher explain the material. It does not only give the students additional explanation
which they got from other sources, but it also helps the students to improve their writing
skills. Thus, the ability to write summary is important to be mastered by the students. As
Kirkland (as cited in Lin, 2012) claims that Although summarizing is a complex activity that
can impose an overwhelming cognitive load on students, in an academic setting it is a highly
essential and necessary skill.

According to Nordquist (2015), a summary is a shortened version of a text that highlights its
key points. A summary is brief version of a larger reading. As highlighted, to write a
summary, the students or the writer have to use their words to express briefly the main idea
and relevant details of the piece they have red. The purpose in writing the summary is to give
the basic ideas of the original reading. Summary did not change the basic concept. It must
keep in order of the original. So summary must put the point of each text or spoken that be
summarized by using the original construction. Jewell (2013) stated that the goal of good
summary writing is to put aside one's own beliefs and feelings about a text and, to the extent
possible, write the summary as the author herself would.

However, findings indicate that it is difficult for the students perform well in writing
summary. For example they write summary just a moment before the course who ask to
write summary begin. Another evidance, the students are indicate doing an act of plagiarism.
They just cheating their friends work. Yet other evidance is the students did not have good
progression in writing ability even they always write a summary. Indeed, some students do
not know anything about the summary they have written before. It will give bad effect in
their learning.

Those facts is quite significants. It needs attention from the teachers to solve the problem,
because some of lecturers in English Department UNG ask their students to read and write a
summary. The source of text can be from everywhere, whether a text of information from
journals, textbooks and other sources such as electronic publications when they do
assignments in their own field of study.

Theoritical Review

According to Wichadee (2013) there are four problems faced by students to make a good
summary writing, namely; (1) they have difficulty determining which information was
relevant and necessary for inclusion in their summaries, (2) students who do not know much
about summary writing rules tend to express their own opinions into a summary, (3) students
are not able to organize the ideas with suitable connections and (4) negative feedback from
the lecturer.

Moreover, Efrilianti (2012) in her research found that there were four problems that caused
the students’ difficulties on writing summary, they are; language aspect, procedure, time for
summarizing text and students’ intentions.
Furthermore, Experience in writing summary also the main reason the researcher raises this
topic. Based on the researcher’s experience, there are some students who did not get any
effect from writing summary. They did not understand about the text source even they had
written summary about it. There are also some students just cite their friends work. Indeed,
they write summary just a moment before the lecturer who ask to write summary begin the
class.

The lecturers also did not give enough feedback about the students’ summary. They did not
give any comment to students about their summary. They just choose which one has a good
summary and which one who has not well enough without any explanation about the mistake
that students made in their summary.

Research Methodology
The researcher uses qualitative method to explain about this study. Moleong (2006) states it
is a research which is meant to understand the phenomenon about what happen to the subject
of the research, such as behavior, perception, motivation, action and etc. holistically by
describing into words and language, to a special scientific context and using scientific
method. The data were obtained from interview and documentation.
This research was conducted to six students who already pass Literary Criticism class in sixth
semester Class D English Department Universitas Negeri Gorontalo Academic Year 2012.
Literary Criticism class is chosen because every meeting the lecturer asks students to write
summary and in the next week the lecturer will choose some good summary and ask the
chosen students who have good summary to present their summary in front of the class in
order to measure students’ knowledge and idea about their summary and the material of the
lesson.
In particular, the researcher chooses them as the participant of this study based on their
summary who divided by the lecturer the good summary and the not good enough summary.
The researcher also observes their performance in presenting the summary. The students
always get trouble in presenting their summary. It seems like they are confuse with their
summary. They did not understand with the summary that they have written before. It is
because they just read their summary without additional explanation about their summary.
They also cannot answer their friends’ question related to their summary. Whereas, they
didnot have any problem in speaking. All of them pass the speaking class with high score.
The analysis of this research is using Furchan and Matja theory. According to Furchan and
Matja (as cited in Sari, 2015), the data can be analyzed by four steps, namely: codification,
data presentation, data interpretation and data conclusion. First of all, the researcher divided
the data that taken from interview and documentation. The researcher classified the data by
giving code that shows data from interview and documentation. After the data already been
coded, the research will arrange the data that show students’ problem in writing summary. In
addition, the result of students’ interview will be analyzed to identify their problem in writing
summary. The researcher also analyzes the students’ summary writing to find out their
mistakes in writing summary, and the last step of this data analysis is concluding the data that
have been analyze. In this step, the research will discover kinds of problem that faced by
students in writing summary.
Findings and Discussions
In this chapter the researcher analyzes the result of interview and participants’ summary, the
researcher found that students have five problems that they faced when they write summary,
they are: (1) students’ difficulties in understanding text source, (2) lack of knowledge about
the procedures of writing summary, (3) lack of feedback from the lecturer who ask them to
write summary, (4) time for summary writing and (5) students laziness. Each of the problems
will be described as following:
Understanding of text source
Three participants of this study admit that they have problem in understanding the text source
of their summary. They got confuse to understand what the text source mean. Based on the
result of interview, the researcher found that the source of this problem is in language aspect,
especially vocabulary. They stated that they usually find difficult words.
The students or the participants of this study faced the difficulties in summarizing the text
because of their limited English vocabulary. It is hard for them to understand about the text
source because it is an English text, a foreign language for them. Grabe and Stoller (as cited
in Koren, 1997) argued that students are faced with an unfamiliar text in the foreign
language; the first challenge seems to be it vocabulary.
Vocabulary is the basic thing to master the language skills that are reading, listening,
speaking and writing. To summarize the text, the students need to read the text source to
understand about what the text means. Therefore, in order to have a good summary, students
also need to improve their vocabulary. Richards (as cited in Rahmawati, 2012) stated that
vocabulary is the core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for
how well learners speak, listen, read, and write.
Moreover, the researcher found that their summary is filled with unimportant information
such as the specific detail of the main idea. It was happened to all participant of this study
except participant 5, because she just cheats her friends work. Their summary also too long
because they just use copy-delete strategy to write their summary. Whereas, according to
Ramazani (2015) the purpose of a summary is to give the reader, in an about 1/3 of the
original length of an article/lecture, a clear, objective picture of the original lecture or text.
Most importantly, the summary restated only the main points of a text or a lecture without
giving examples or details, such as dates, numbers or statistics.
Procedure of writing summary
Lack of knowledge about the procedures of writing summary is the next problem that faced
by students in writing summary. They did not understand the steps or directions in writing a
summary whereas the steps in summary writing are very important. It can establish the
content of summary is match with the text source of the summary. Procedures are needed to
remind if people forget to take certain actions, or perhaps they keep on getting things wrong,
or perhaps tasks are so long and complex that people need a checklist if they're going to get
things right (MindTool, n.d.).
All of the participants of this study get trouble with the steps of writing summary. When they
write a summary, they just read and start to write summary. Actually, students can write
summary even they just read the material and did not follow another steps in writing
summary. But, the content of their summary is not good enough. The content of their
summary did not represent the text source well. Their summary also contains unimportant
information from the text source.
Procedure in writing summary is very important to help the students to write summary well.
It will help the students to determine the content of their summary. Tomitch (2000) stated
that Procedural knowledge is knowing how to or being able to extract the main ideas in the
text and write a coherent summary. Thus, students need to follow the steps to write summary
correctly to get good summary and compatible with the source of text.
Most of the summary that written by the participant of this study just copy all the words from
the text source. They just reduce the length of the text source by delete some information
from the text. It is hard for them to write the summary by using their own words. Indeed,
they did not paraphrase the words. It is happened because they did not know about the steps
in writing summary.
Lack of feedback
Hattie and Timperley (2007) states that Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on
learning and achievement. Feedback is important thing in teaching and learning process. It
can guide the students in their learning. It also helps the teacher to make students understand
about what they want to teach.
Based on the result of interview, the researcher found that there are five participants of this
study who admitted that they get lack of feedback about their summary. They are participant
1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Indeed, there is no feedback et all from the teacher about the summary.
According to the participant 1, 2 and 3, the lecturer of Literary Criticism as the course where
this study was conducted, did not give enough feedback for their summary. The lecturer just
tells them the good summary and the bad summary without any other corrections, even in the
language aspects of their summary.
In the other hand, Participant 4 and 5 claim that they never get feedback from the lecturer
about their summary. It affected to their summary. Participant 4 of this study just use copy-
delete strategy to write summary. She did not use her own words to write summary. Further,
participant 5 of this study just cheat her friend’s summary.
Therefore, the students really need feedback from the lecturer to improve their mistake.
Because feedback will provide information specifically relate to the task or process of
learning that fills a gap between what the students understood and what is aimed to be
understood by the students. Good feedback also will increase students’ motivation to write
summary. So, the summary will be useful in their learning, and it will help them to improve
their learning ability especially in writing summary.
Time for summary writing
Time for summary writing is the next problem that faced by students when they write
summary. It is related to the time when the students write summary and time that the
students spend to write summary. There are three participants of this study who admitted
time for summary writing is one of their problem in writing summary, they are participant 1,
participant 2 and participant 5. Sometimes they write summary just a moment before the
course begin. It is because of their laziness. The lecturer also did not check carefully their
summary so they keep doing this over and over again.
Time for summary writing is related to the capability of students to manage their time. Time
management is very important in students learning. It can establish students’ success in their
learning. Kenneth (2011) stated Time Management is a set of principles, practices, skills,
tools and systems that help us use time to accomplish what we want. It refers to the
techniques, and strategies that individuals use in utilizing and maximizing the work that they
do. Time management in writing summary is very important in order to produce good
summary that appropriate with the text source. To write a good summary, students need to
allocate enough time to write summary. Their time to write summary that just a moment
before the course begins is improperly. It is impossible for them to write summary nicely.
Students’ laziness
Last but not least, laziness is one of the big five problems faced by students in writing
summary. Five participants consider their laziness as the big problem they have to face when
they write summary. It is proved by some impacts that appears because of laziness, namely
act of plagiarism and negative perception about summary that affected to participant 2 of this
study. He said that even writing summary is really useful in his learning, but it is a boring
thing.
Writing summary is meant to help students in their learning. Students can increase their
understanding about the text by writing summary. It also can improve their writing and
reading ability. But, some students did not aware about this. Because of their laziness, they
just write summary to fulfill the assignment. Writing summary is just to meet teacher
expectation. It makes summary did not give much impact to their learning.
Laziness not only effected to the result of students’ summary, but it also effected to the
process of writing summary such as selecting the important information from the text source
that should be put in the summary. Indeed, time of writing summary also get effect from the
laziness. It can be seen from the interview that three participants of this study stated that
sometimes they write summary only a few minutes before the lecturer who ask to make
summary come in their class. Moreover, they just need 30 minutes to write summary. This is
not a proper time to make summary considering all of the steps in writing summary.
According to Rocinante (n.d.), Laziness is not something permanent that cannot be removed
from an individual. Students need to be healed from this behavior because it can disturb their
learning. It is not an easy work to removed laziness from students because laziness it is
already been their habitual. The teacher has to help them to remove this behavior by giving
them positive feedback about their summary.
Based on the explanation, the researcher found that the problems that faced by students in
writing summary is related each other. The problem in procedure of writing summary is the
only problem who face by all of the participant of this study. The researcher also found that
students’ laziness a serious problem faced by students, because it emerges the other two
problems, they are procedure in writing summary and time for summary writing. The
relation between each problem can be seen in problems chain below.
Figure 1.1. Problems’ Chain of Writing Summary

Feedback from
Result

Needs the lecturer

Understanding Time for Laziness

of text source impact summary writing Affect

Procedure in
Impact

Ignore
writing summary
Generally speaking, all the problem in writing summary is connected each other. Students’
laziness could be the bigger problem than the other problem. It emerges the other two
problem appears, namely: procedure in writing summary and time for summary writing.
Because of laziness, the students ignore to use the right procedure in writing summary.
Likewise, some of students did not know about the steps in writing summary. They prefer to
write their summary directly then find out about the steps in writing summary. Laziness
affected to the time of writing summary as well. Some of them write summary just a moment
before the lecturer come to the class.
Both of the problem that were affected by laziness case has a great impact on their
understanding about the text source of their summary. Without the right procedure, it may
difficult for the students to understand about the whole original text meaning. Moreover,
time for summary writing also affect on students understanding about the original text. If the
students write their summary just a moment before the lecturer begin the class, it means they
write summary in a hurry. It makes their summary has low quality.
Feedback has important role to solve the problem that face by students in writing summary.
the lecturer can provide necessary information’s to improve students’ summary. Feedback
also can increase students’ motivation to write summary is the source of the entire problem
that appears when students write summary. One of the participant of this study admitted that
summary is a boring thing, he has lack motivation to write summary. Whereas, dryness of
motivation is the biggest cause of laziness.
Students need feedback from the lecturer to decrease their problem in writing summary.
Lack of feedback from the lecturer about their summary may decrease their motivation to
write summary. It emerges their laziness to write summary. They write summary just to
fulfill their assignment from the lecturer without any benefit for them both in increasing their
understanding about the text that they have summarized and improving their writing ability.
Conclusions
Based on the explanation, the researcher finds some students’ problems in writing summary.
A summary is a shortened version of a text that highlights the key points of the original text.
The problems that the students faced are from internal factors and external factor. This
means the problems are caused by themselves and also from someone else.
There are five problems that faced by students in writing summary, first is students’
difficulties in understanding text source. Students are hard to determine the meaning of the
source text because of the language aspect such as vocabulary. It makes them take a long
time to write summary, because they need to translate the difficult words that they find.
Sometimes, to avoid the mistake in understanding the text, they did not use their own words
to write summary. They use all of the text source words.
The second problem is lack of knowledge about the procedures of writing summary.
Students need to understand about the procedures to writing summary to make their summary
better. It is very helpful to understand about the procedures in writing summary. Because it
will determine the content of their summary and the summary can give exact explanation
about the original text.
The researcher also found that students get lack of feedback from the lecturer who asks them
to write summary. The lecturer just collects their summary and did not give any comment to
their summary. Feedback is important thing in teaching and learning process. It can guide
the students in their learning. It also helps the teacher to make students understand about
what they want to teach.
Time for summary writing is another problem that students faced in writing summary.
Sometimes, students write summary just a moment before the course begins. It makes the
content of their summary is not too good. They just copy the text source. Indeed, they will
cite their friends work. Students need to manage their time carefully. They should allocate
their time properly.
The last problem that faced by students is their own laziness. The participants of this study
consider that laziness is the main problem when they write summary. Laziness is not
something permanent. It can be changed or even removed from the students learning
especially in writing summary. Students need to consider that writing summary is very
important in their learning. Motivation also can help the students to solve this problem. It
can be given by anyone, but it is better from their teacher who asks them to write summary.
Suggestions
Referring to the finding of this research, the researcher has some suggestions for the readers
and the next researchers related to students’ problem writing summary, because writing
summary is useful to help the students to improve their language skills ability especially in
writing summary.
Students need to increase their awareness about writing summary. They should realize
writing summary is not just an assignment from the lecturer to achieve good score in their
study. Writing summary is not just useful in students learning, but it also can be useful in
their daily life. There are also many jobs that require this ability, such as writer, reporter and
etc.
For the lecturers who use summary as their technique in teaching, they should look carefully
the students’ summary. They should check the students’ summary and give the comment or
feedback about their summary. Some participants of this study admitted that the lecturer did
not give them enough feedback about their summary. It also can increase their motivation to
write summary.
And the last is for all people who want to conduct research about students’ problem in
summary, this study can be used as basic knowledge about the students’ problems in writing
summary. Although, this paper is not perfect, the researcher believes it wil give good impact
for the emendation of education quality, especially in English Department Universitas Negeri
Gorontalo.
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