A Model of Assignment of Importance and its Contribution to Main Idea Instruction and Assessment

• Autor(a) principal: Torres, Ana Cecília da Gama
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Signum: Estudos da Linguagem
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/signum/article/view/3991
• topic: EFL reading comprehension; approaches to instruction and assessment of main ideas; a model of assignment of importance to information; Compreensão em leitura em língua estrangeira (inglês); Ensino e avaliação de idéias principais; Modelo de atribuição de importância à informação.

This paper presents the difficulties in assessing and teaching the ability to identify main ideas in EFL: the lack of consensus on what the term main idea means; the difficulty in establishing a criterion for main idea identification; the gap between research and EFL reading instruction. Attempting to bridge this gap, we propose that it is important for teachers and test constructors to become acquainted with models of assignment of importance to information which have already received support from previous experimental research. Finally, we conclude that due to the complexity of the construct (ability to identify main ideas), there is a need for further experimental and ethnographic research.