Prior Knowledge and Vocabulary Acquisition in Reading Comprehension

Posted on Aug 14, 2024 in Language

Item 5: Types of Prior Knowledge

5.1. Types of Prior Knowledge

5.1.1. General Knowledge about the World

1. Knowledge Sociocultural. Some define it as a form of knowledge, largely implicit (if not always consciously acquired, nor is it easily accessible to the subject), which reflects some thoughts shared by members of a family, community, intellectual discipline, ethnicity, national culture, or any other group that is relevant to the subject. It reflects how people in that group see the world and interact with it, and represents a powerful filter through which they necessarily spend all their experiences and knowledge.
2. Forms of Behavior. Others assign more importance to knowledge on how people behave. From it, readers make inferences about personal goals and plans of the characters in the stories, character traits, emotions, thoughts or knowledge, and possible causes or consequences of their actions. This facilitates the construction of the mental model from the textual information and prior knowledge of the general reader, and also allows you to anticipate values, goals or plans of the protagonists.
3. The Valence or Polarity of an Action. Also called attention to another factor that is necessary for understanding the underlying message of many fables, the moral and refers to knowledge about the “valence” positive or negative for the central action of the fable and the outcome of that action, and knowledge about the consistency of both. This is the reason that, when a positive action tale of a character results in negative consequences (or vice versa), the moral is more difficult to understand by the reader.
4. Affectivity. Finally, others emphasize the role of knowledge of the subject and their experiences in the field of affectivity, which would be useful for developing a more coherent mental representation of emotional states of characters in the story.

5.1.2. Knowledge of Text Structure

1. Structure of Narrative Texts
   These texts are better understood by both readers and researchers, and narratives that have been paid more attention than any other literary genre, inside them, the most frequently discussed were the stories. Initially studies focused on knowledge on structural aspects, the pattern of stories, most recently discussed more emphasis one aspect of its content, the causal relationships.
   
   a. Outline of the Stories is the knowledge that members of a culture obtained on the typical structure of the tales, would result from the abstraction of previous experiences with stories, both listened as read, but can also be taught directly. The scheme provides a conceptual framework, which contains a “hole” for each of the basic components of history: the initial situation, goal, complication and resolution.
   b. Causal Knowledge is the subject of recent works that consider the narrative as a description of a sequence of events and states, and the role of the reader understand who or what causes each. To achieve this, the reader uses his knowledge of physical causality, temporal co-occurrence, or social norms of behavior in a given situation, to give coherence to the various parts of the story.
2. Structure of Expository Texts
   Expository texts convey a great amount of information organized hierarchically. For that reason, a proper understanding depends largely on the uptake of different levels of importance.
   Among the many proposals on instruction in structure of expository texts is that of Meyer (1985) the most quoted and used. In short, this author identifies five types of logical, rhetorical predicates that affect the organization of memory, rhetorical schemes. These relationships are compared, response, causation, accumulation and description.
   Also, Meyer finds that each of the logical relationships is often introduced by specific signals, various formulas used by the authors to draw readers’ attention to aspects of semantic content or the structure itself.
   Finally, the author says that the most efficient strategy that can take the reader is to identify and use the organizational scheme selected by the author, and his guide and structure their efforts in understanding and remembering textual information.

5.1.3. Specific Knowledge

The authors have referred to it using different terms, such as specific knowledge, specialized content, or knowledge about a subject. It covers any information relating to any aspect of the physical world, social or mental reader includes aspects declarative, procedural and conditional, and may be formally or informally acquired and used. Their influence extends to understanding narrative texts and, above all, to the exhibition.

1. In Narrative Texts
   To understand such texts, is of great importance on the content knowledge of a particular narrative (eg a party or going to the restaurant), with dashes of one of the most quoted constructs. In this sense, the scripts provide a triple aid:

1. Impose an organization to the story, providing a structure within which new information is assembled, especially when the text is unstructured.
2. Provides missing values, which explains why the use of a suitable script reduces the integration time of the new information.
3. Facilitates the mental representation of text content, thus conditioning the level of understanding.

2. In Expository Texts
However, without belittling the role of specific knowledge in the understanding of narratives, it seems clear that its importance is greater for the understanding of expository texts in the following areas (Kintsch, 1988):

1. Prior knowledge influences the processing and storage of new information, from several perspectives: to determine the most important aspects of the text, thus facilitating the differentiation of the important information off the irrelevant favors consolidation and dedication selective attention, and allows us to establish relationships between different parts of the text.
2. It exerts its influence on memory, helping the recovery of new information, both short and long term, offering plans for subsequent access and retrieval, and focusing the orderly and systematic search in the database memory.
3. Specific knowledge about a topic is a powerful predictor of comprehension of expository texts, or as the best of them.

3. Erroneous Preconceptions
However, not all prior knowledge promotes understanding and learning. Not infrequently, the readers’ prior knowledge regarding a given subject, it conflicts with scientific theories about it. In this case, science is often speak of intuitive, erroneous preconceptions or prejudices. Among subjects of school age, these misconceptions of reality or any aspect thereof, are rooted in everyday experience in that field, in social interactions with peers or adults, generated in culture media, or inadequate previous formal instruction.
While not necessarily bad, sometimes an obstacle to learning and conceptual change, proving difficult to change through traditional instruction, found it to stay when you have completed the enrollment period.

5.1.4. Vocabulary

Klobas four types of vocabulary of a subject, as this is considered as a reader, writer, listener or speaker. Reader’s vocabulary is the number of written words that can be decoded and understood, and, except in very young children, match the number of recognized words in their spoken form, both are receptive, who are distinct from the production are also under both However, oral and written. All subjects produced, in all its forms, a smaller number of words that they recognize, that is due at least in part, to write or speak about those issues unless they read about or hear about that. In either modality can be analyzed in two aspects:

1. Depth of Vocabulary. With this dimension try to specify the tasks you can perform a reader who knows a word. Given that not knowing a word it’s “all or nothing”, it is considered that a person knows in depth a word when it is capable of performing the following tasks: developing a definition of it, to know their multiple meanings, and access them easily, identify its connotations and metaphorical uses relations with other terms, indicate the types of text that is common to find, recognize and select appropriate contexts for use, apply it correctly in any situation, and recognize their inappropriate use and actually using it in the usual thought or speech.
2. Amplitud Vocabulary. It is another aspect related to the former, because in many cases also want to know the number of words a reader knows. In this regard, identifies some sources of disagreement between authors when estimating the extent of vocabulary. The first concerns the procedure most frequently used for evaluation, dictionary, then extrapolating the results, the discussions arise both by the different dictionaries used, for the low similarity between this choice of words with the usual language of the subject. The second cause of the differences is the type of test used, since, as stated in the preceding paragraph is not defined when we know the meaning of a word: there are calls to recognize the word, others demand a synonym or a paraphrase, others require a definition, an example of a sentence in which the term appears, or a list of traits inherent to it. Another controversy has its origin in the definition of what constitutes various words, for example, when they belong to one family. Due to these reasons, estimates of the extent of vocabulary ranges from a few very large intervals.

5.1.5. Metacognitive Knowledge

A final form of knowledge influences reading comprehension, the metacognitive. It covers several categories as the object of it: the subject himself, tasks, strategies.

1. The knowledge of the subject involves individual perceptions or conceptions of himself referred to the activities of learning and thinking. This category includes the consciousness level of knowledge and level of expertise on a subject that must be learned, information on their own strategies to use for a particular purpose, the specification of cognitive tasks in which the subject is or is not expert; the comparison with others in these activities, and the generalization about what usually happens with people in the implementation of their cognitive processes.
2. The knowledge about tasks for the analysis of cognitive activities that the subject must perform, such as type of task to be performed, or strategies and resources that are most effective for successfully completing the task. This information can be either cognitive (eg, the summary strategy), motivational (eg, referring to the amount of effort required to achieve a goal) or contextual (eg on the optimum conditions for a scientific work).
3. The knowledge about strategies is related to the establishment, by the subject, that certain forms of action allow for a better or easier to learn than others; also includes information on rules regarding how and when to apply each strategy.

5.2. Vocabulary Acquisition

This issue is among those who, since ancient times, have attracted the interest of psychologists of learning after a long period in which it had been almost forgotten in the 80s has seen a strong resurgence.
The study of vocabulary acquisition is of great importance due to its role in reading comprehension, the (alleged) experienced rapid growth during the period of schooling and, paradoxically, the difficulty to teach new terms in laboratory experiments. From a practical standpoint, the focus is on two main issues: first, whether it is formal instruction in vocabulary acquisition can help the (virtual) machine that occurs during traditional instruction, and second, it tries to specify the ways of organizing the resources available to facilitate learning of new words are discussed in next sections three modes of learning words, incidental or informal, intentional, and eclectic.

5.2.1. Incidental Learning

In elaprendizaje incidental vocabulary, the main purpose of the interaction with a particular situation is not learning new terms. Here are some oral environments (talks, films or television) or letters (signs, ads, reading newspapers or books). In this mode of learning vocabulary is found that young children limit the number of hypotheses to consider to find a reference to a term. This is based on three assumptions about words, understood as labels: they often refer to objects, not a part of them, the objects with the same name are often similar, and each object usually has only one name.
Regarding the influence of reading on incidental vocabulary acquisition ensures that prior exposure to reading explains a large part of the variability in measures of general knowledge and vocabulary, being better predictor of both variables to the overall capacity. These differences in prior exposure to reading may be due to environmental factors (such as cultural opportunities, modeling of the parents or the school) or personal (such as preference for reading over other activities).
We can say that the conditions most conducive to incidental learning of new vocabulary are also a good ability to understand, repeated exposures to the word you want to learn, conceptually explicit texts, and terms of difficulty.

5.2.2. Intentional Learning

1. Contextual Education
   In this mode it is assumed that knowledge about a term is inferred by the student through the use of contexts (sentences or paragraphs) that clarify the meaning of a word not known. In general, the only context that takes into account is the writing, understood in two ways: lexicon, since the presence of a particular word on a limited sentence, syntactically and semantically, the other constituents of the sentence outline, and that the situation model in which a word is conditioned to make inferences about it, and the possible meanings it can take.
   The most common training procedure consists of three phases: the first presents various subjects phrases that include the word to learn, then the student tries to determine the meaning of the word, analyzing their use in sentences; finally, the subject is presented with the correct meaning as a brief definition. Although missing many points to be clarified, the most relevant conclusions of this research are:

1. The positive effect of this form of instruction is far superior in cases of repeated presentation of contexts in which that word is used well as they learn words from context is a slow. Therefore, the training is effective only with an intermediate level of practice or high, with a low level is pointless, why some do not consider it a good strategy. Furthermore, once derived the meaning, not necessarily been learned since the derivation is only the first stage.
2. Some contexts offer limited help to decipher the meaning, and may even lead to misunderstanding. To fulfill the functions assigned to it in learning new terms, the reader must have a rich text signals, clearly illustrating the meaning of the word new. Among these signals, the synonyms are cited, the tone in which it is written, the explanation of the new word with known words, or analogies.
3. It is advisable to include exercises on localization of signals on the sentence or beyond, offering the reader opportunities to implement the rules learned. You should also inform the subject of the standard texts do not always provide the necessary signals, and help you recognize when information should be considered only tentative or incomplete.
4. The number of students in the class or group to be trained: the small group instruction produces better results.

1. Direct Instruction
   Direct instruction in vocabulary refers to those situations where information about the meaning of the word is submitted directly to the subject, this activity can be performed by the student on their own (eg, searching for a word in the dictionary), or be addressed by the teacher (eg, providing definitions of terms not known). The two methods of direct instruction are the most popular search for meaning in the dictionary, and use of keywords.
   a. Dictionary. Since, with some frequency, the (con) natural texts do not offer enough information to derive meaning of unknown words, to encourage individuals to use the dictionary seems a good recommendation. In this sense, Black (1991) believes that the definitions encourage both the construction of the meaning of a word not known at all, as the extension or confirmation of prior representation of partially known words. However, the use of the dictionary presents some drawbacks: the readers are often reluctant to interrupt their reading for a word, the dictionary definitions are not always written in plain language; subjects make mistakes when they take into account all information submitted in a dictionary entry (different meanings of the term), because the definitions have rarely synonymous or specify in what contexts should be used every meaning. In this context the recommendations are framed in the sense that dictionaries (especially those with computer support) should include, for each term, diversified information: brief definitions and other extensive, explanatory diagrams and drawings, and contextual information to indicate that a particular word and a definition of it, are synonymous only in certain contexts and not others.
   b. Keywords. Mnemonic is a strategy developed from systematic techniques that have proven to be powerful aids to memory. It is based on current theories of memory, which recognize greater memorability for significant materials, concrete and imaginable. The method consists of several stages: the first was recoded unfamiliar word (eg “match”) in a more familiar and concrete, the keyword, which looks like spelling or acoustically to some part of the unknown (eg, “Equipment”), then relates the keyword (team) with the definition of the unfamiliar word (match) by a mental image or a verbal description (eg “on the computer all are considered equal). This, when asked the definition of the new word, it has an efficient and systematic way of recovery: from the unknown word (match), and by keyword (computer), is passed to the representation ( ” on the computer all are considered equal) to get the definition ( “align = consider somebody or something like another”). The method has proved effective in situations that require an initial learning new terms, then those who learn new information. To enhance its effectiveness, it is advisable to provide readers with additional practice in which recalling the images raised by the experimenter for stronger, because, although they are easily acquired, these images are ephemeral if not repeated, in addition, ensure associations generated by the subject are usually long term, more effective than those offered by the experimenter.

5.2.3. Eclectic Techniques

The high number of vocabulary instruction programs that have been carried out, we can draw three conclusions: the research that compares the various methods of instruction above, the results are not unequivocal, nor sufficient evidence that none of the methods profoundly affects the understanding and memory of parts of the text containing new vocabulary, untrained, and finally, as the depth of vocabulary knowledge is complex, so must be the instructional process, and include contextual knowledge and the definitional.
From these principles stem two recommendations: the effectiveness of any method depends on the number of exhibitions and meetings with the word you are trying to learn, moreover, mixed methods, those using more of the resources cited are the most effective, since both forms of instruction, contextual and definitional, not conflict with each other but are complementary.
This process ensures that the best methods of instruction in vocabulary are “rich”, those which include eclectic techniques. This type of instruction in natural contexts of classroom, consisting of three phases.

1. Before reading: after deciding, by a pretest, which words are new to most readers, they are the terms to learn, including phrases specially designed to reveal its meaning, the subject read these sentences and try to develop a definition of each new word, or find relevant contextual cues for meaning.
2. During reading: the student is presented with texts in which new words appear in ordinary sentences in natural contexts, which contain signals sufficient to allow the inference of meaning.
3. After reading: using new words, under the supervision of the teacher, students do independent work, such as making new phrases, look up definitions in the dictionary, or summarize characteristics.

5.3. Activation of Knowledge

Prerequisite for all the benefits associated with different types of prior knowledge, is its proper activation. It is therefore considered that in the process of integration of meaning and at all levels of representation, various components from prior knowledge of the subject associated with the text elements. This leads, especially the proper organization of knowledge in a network with plenty of relationships and interconnections, which allows to have a larger number of paths to relevant information. In the same direction to ensure that target other words, concepts and propositions of the text are included in the measure that, individually and in combination, evoke and activate information in memory. From different perspectives (those of the author, the reader or instructor) proposes the following tasks as activating prior knowledge:

1. Insert titles. In narrative texts is shown that, if no title, are more difficult to understand because they are processed for longer and not remembered better.
2. Include advance organizers. As mentioned, the main function that tries to reach them the author of the text, is to serve as a bridge between what the reader already knows and what he intends to learn.
3. Generate questions. For expository texts, one of the most used is the generation of questions by the reader, especially those based on knowledge, those that stem from a desire to expand knowledge.
4. Answer questions. It is especially useful answer questions processors, they relate to the text content is learned (eg, why not …?), Relating to the information already available to the reader, and inquired about the reasons for the events recounted by the text.
5. Search relationships. It is also effective to urge readers to explicitly link the personal knowledge, whether episodic or semantic, with an idea presented in the text.
6. Use analogies. Using examples and analogies in the text or the teacher’s, are an effective tool to explicitly relate prior knowledge (made known to the field) with the new information that it intends to acquire.

Item 6: Making Summaries

6.1. Procedures in the Realization of the Abstract

6.1.1. Search the Important Ideas and Textual Relations

To make a good summary is necessary to extract the most important, the essence of what has been read. The instruction in the rules to condense information, the most common mode of training in implementation of summaries, not always improve on the readers ability to identify the main idea of the paragraph, so you need specific instruction.
There are various methods of conducting training in the differentiation between important and secondary information, although the most frequent instruction in finding the main idea, and the teaching of thematic organization of concepts and propositions within the text.

1. Finding the main idea

Among the meanings of the term “main idea” is the theme, essentially selective summary, interpretation, keyword, topic, title, subject, thesis, main points, schematic macro or superstructure, with the first three terms which have a significance similar to main idea. This is the result of a combination of three variables: the reading goals that guide the reader, their previous knowledge and information that the author wished to convey by writing this text.
About the way skilled readers identify important ideas, suggest two possibilities are not mutually exclusive: guided by signals that include the authors to emphasize the importance of specific information, similar to those we have mentioned when talking about improving documents or progressively developing the ability to distinguish data from high school principal. The process undertaken by good readers as a narrative text does not explicitly stated main idea is: before reading a hypothesis are often asked about the main idea of the passage, then proceeding to verification or further, what is called conditional importance of information or part of the text if they are unable to state after the reading, review the text until they succeed. This will also concedes that the criteria for assigning importance to information may vary throughout the reading.
Given the difficulties presented in this activity, poor readers, given the importance of it in reading comprehension and activities associated with it (such as summarization, taking notes or asking questions), the teaching main idea comprehension of educational practice is widespread. In this regard it should be recalled, according to Solé (1994), which ask students to tell us the most important thing in a paragraph or section, or what the author wants to convey in text, not to teach to find the main idea. In all programs of instruction in identifying the main idea, stressing the special need to carry out direct teaching of this strategy, modeling, practice and performance information, based on simple materials and evolve to more complex.

1. Instruction in textual structures

Although there is no single way to communicate information from the writers, and that they often break schematic expectations of the reader, however, textbook authors tend to use a certain preference schemes. Moreover, many readers, even adults have trouble identifying the underlying structure of scientific texts, in addition, they are not aware that this structure is an excellent guide to understanding and remembering.
To promote understanding of the underlying structure, suggests several resources: teaching the reader to make some concrete representation of the ideas of text, like a diagram or concept map; instruct in the use of typographical signs such as font, size, etc. and provide information on the most common forms of organization of the text. Because of improvements associated with the latter alternative, there have been numerous attempts to instruct readers in the structures of texts.
Although there have implemented programs of instruction in narrative structure, but are much more abundant than the expository aim, for two reasons: they are the hardest to understand, and most often must be summarized. Knowledge of its structure, and help to summarize, it is also useful for the implementation of other strategies, synthesizing information, highlight text, focus, or structure the mental representation of the text. In the programs, some authors consider a single form of organization of the text, while others teach several.

6.1.2. Application of Rules to Reduce Information

A summary is a condensation or summary of the original piece that reflects its essence or its main ideas. Therefore ensures that the characteristic of a short, common to all its possible forms is the density of the text, understood as the number of relations between concepts. To achieve this reduction in the length of text and increasing the density of the ideas contained therein, the proposed rules to reduce information. Most of them are based on those developed by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). A possible formulation of the same is as follows:

1. Abolition: dispense with any information that is not essential for the interpretation of statements subsequent to suppress information that is considered trivial or redundant.
2. Generalization: replacing strings, lists of objects, propositions, or actions by others more broadly, to include each of the suppressed.
3. Construction/Integration: replacing a sequence of events for a new proposal to include them, and implied by the set of deleted.

Some authors propose a rule, the selection / invention of the topic sentence. This is a statement summarizing a paragraph in some cases can be extracted directly from text and included in the abstract, but not all paragraphs contain a topic sentence, in which case it must be made.
Of the four targeted rules, the first is suppression of information, and the others are substitution rules, but all of which reduce the amount of information and organize it. Another feature is the recursion, as they may apply again to further reduce the information, and obtain a higher level macrostructure.

6.1.3. Finalizing the Summary

Stein and Kirby (1992) point out certain characteristics that differentiate good summaries of the bad: the degree of copying of text or rearrangement of information, the integration of the main ideas in different paragraphs, the use of connectives to explain the relationship between propositions, and the presence of a global interpretation and personal perspective to summarize the text. With that, the information produced is less and less like the original terms used by the text, establishes stronger links with relevant background, and is a more abstract and general.
So in addition to the rules outlined in the previous section, some authors make other complementary, on review of what has been written, and the final wording of the summary. Thus, for finalizing the summary should:

1. Collect main ideas. It draws attention to the need to evaluate what has been written to check if they really have grasped the main ideas of the text, and rewrite the summary if you think necessary.
2. Confer coherence to the text. Unlike any previous endorsements that are unrelated to each other, the information provided in the summary is to be presented in a consistent manner.
3. Reflect the hierarchical structure. It is also considered important that the summary reflects the hierarchical organization of the textual content therefore suggest explicitly link important ideas and the subordinate.
4. Give it an appropriate way. Finally, it is recommended the drafting of the summary care to give appropriate final form since, when synthesizing a wealth of information from one or more original pieces, the text resulting concentrate may lack the proper form. Adjustments to perform may include or paraphrased from the introduction of connectives, the insertion of brief introductions or conclusions. The paraphrase is especially useful for two reasons: it increases the ability to recall the material, and avoids the use of expressions present in the text, which should be in a good summary.

A practice that facilitates that deep processing of text, especially when you have already acquired a certain mastery of the strategy is the creation of text summaries of parts of ever larger.

6.2. Variables that Affect the Realization of the Abstract

As a complement to these more traditional aspects in the development of the abstract, other authors have tried to delineate the relative influence of different variables in the realization of the abstract. These include:

6.2.1. Subjective Variables

Of all the characteristics of the subject that have been identified as critical in understanding, outlined some as more influential in making abstracts:

1. The subject’s prior knowledge about the subject matter, and that the shorter, the greater the difficulties in the mental representation of the content and the realization of a coherent summary.
2. Different skills of the reader, in particular its ability to produce written texts, to formulate a plan and implement it, or bring your writing to a particular reader.
3. The previous experience conducting briefings, or other similar tasks, like preparing outlines or semantic maps.
4. The subject’s level of performance in certain cognitive operations critical to the summary, including the suppression of information, generalization, or the integration of details into a central theme.
5. Their interest in the topic of the text, since the low motivation to write about a subject that does not interest impairs the quality of the abstract.

6.2.2. Text Variables

Among textual features that influence the development of the abstract, Hidi and Anderson (1986) suggest the following:

1. The length of the text, and that the shorter text, the easier it is to summarize the child require removal and integration of information.
2. The genre or text type, are summarized as the narrative more easily than expository, and children are able to summarize earlier and with greater precision. Among the reasons, the most experience suggests that subjects have with narrative, more linear organization, and the less information they convey.
3. The complexity, which, though difficult to define, is related to rare vocabulary, with a sentence structure more elaborate, with the level of abstraction of concepts and ideas used, textual organization, and the absence of signal phrases and themes that highlight the structure.

6.2.3. Task Variables

Three task variables that have aroused interest among researchers: the possibility of rereading the text while drawing up the summary, the individual or group performance, and different purposes for which it is made.

1. Chance of rereading
   First we note that the presence or absence of the text as the summary is made affects the quality of it, because if the reader has access to the material, are started at different cognitive operations can not be required when reviewing the text.
   
   a. If it is available, can be read several times, thus reducing memory requirements, and allowed to free resources for other activities such as differentiating the main ideas of the secondary, detect inconsistencies, or rearrange information, moreover, might compare the original text with the summary made by modifying the latter if found inappropriate. On the downside, there is the increased likelihood of verbatim text information.
   b. If the text is not available, the preparation of the summary is based on information representation and memory, so it is more likely to omit details, reorganize the content, or words or phrases are replaced by paraphrases. This, though often leads to brief summaries and fewer deliberate changes of content, promotes long-term memory.
2. Developing individual and group
   A final variable affecting the quality of abstracts is raised by Hooper, Sales and Rysavy (1994), comparing two methods of generating short, in pairs or individually. University students who worked alone, outnumbered those who did a couple in several tests: literal, treatment efficiency (relationship between training time and score achieved), and generate summaries as instructed.
   The explanation the authors note concerns the summarization involves some customization of information, so the attempt to satisfy the two team members, may lead to non-personal information for any of them; recall in addition to academics, unlike lower-level students often have little contact in their classes, and not always interact properly when asked or needed.
   To summarize this section, Hidi and Anderson (1986) makes recommendations on the selection of texts towards the achievement of abstract instruction: start with short narrative, little complex, with the possibility to reread and study the text, prepared the summary of an individual, not too short, and giving more weight to the synthesis of information that the final form. As you move the instructional program, can complicate the task of almost indefinitely, changing one or more of the aforementioned variables.
3. Type summary
   Depending on the role they can play, Hidi and Anderson (1986) differentiate two types of abstracts: a subject who produces for himself (summary for the writer), and produced to be read by someone else (summary for a reader), both have somewhat different characteristics.
   The content of the summary will be read by the person who has written often unfamiliar to the one who produces, in general, is made from small pieces of text, phrases or paragraphs, and often form end is less careful with shorter sentences, with a lower degree of cohesion, and without respect in all cases the rules of grammar.
   Instead, the summary for another reader, the author is more familiar with the subject, usually the product of an overview of the text, after several readings of it, and its final form tends to follow the regulations outlined in previous sections, resulting in a finished product and complete.

6.3. Abstract Functions

As just indicated, taking into account the role they can play, Hidi and Anderson (1986) distinguish two types of summaries: those who developed a reader for himself, and produced to be read by another person in addition to their characteristics, both have somewhat different purposes. The first one is done to facilitate understanding of a text, or to supervise or self, the second is made to be used by another person, in most cases the teacher to assess students.
It is therefore considered that the summary of text has a dual role in understanding, and cognitive and metacognitive strategy, is also a widely used resource in the assessment of understanding and learning.

Cognitive Strategy 1. The summary can be an excellent way to synthesize information, both reading and studying, for later use for various purposes. It also helps readers become more aware of the structure of the ideas of the text, and how they relate to each other, thus favoring a more elaborated mental representation and complete.
2Estrategia metacognitive. It is also useful for monitoring the process of understanding and memory, because, not being able to summarize what you just read, is a sign that must be put into practice some of the strategies to improve understanding, and reread the text, make an outline, or to devote additional study time.
3Evaluación of understanding. In addition to improving reading comprehension, the summary is a widely used instrument to assess it. In schools, in many instances in which the subject is asked to prepare a summary without access to the text, the purpose is to assess understanding and remembering what has been studied. The authors caution, however, about its use as a method for assessing text comprehension in individuals who have little experience in the production of texts and abstracts.