An empirical study on underlining as a reading strategy: Focus on the the relationship with co-text and summaries
Jong Hoon Seo · The Journal of Linguistics Science · 2025
This paper addresses the significance of underlining as a reading strategy and emphasizes its role beyond mere representation. It connects to the reader's cognitive processes and aids in constructing context and summaries. The study involved learners of varying language proficiency levels and focused on different text types. Underlining primarily targeted propositions at the clause or sentence level with some focus on individual words or phrases. As language proficiency increased, the relevance of underlined content to the context and its convergence in summaries improved. Thus, underlining is closely linked to a reader's language proficiency and cognitive abilities. This study aimed to validate the educational effectiveness of underlining by experimentally designing the connection between context and summary. Challenges included obtaining a diverse sample of learners by age and proficiency and the limitation of texts to certain genres.