Cognitive Strategies

2) Cognitive Strategies

a) Reading Text to Gain Understanding. Reading the text carefully was the strategies that applied by all the subjects. To gain comprehension of the text, they read and reread the original sentence they would paraphrase. They identified and grouped words or phrases logically in order to understand the idea of the text. To comprehend the idea of the sentence completely, they often looked up dictionary to find the meaning of words that was not understood. The applied example of this strategy performed by Subject 1 when he was paraphrasing task 1:

The first quotation I found was: "Modern" research on child language acquisition dates back to the latter part of the Eighteenth century, after the German philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann recorded his observation of the psychology and linguistics development of

his young son”. The word that I still do not understand here is dates back, latter part, and acquisition. However after I searched in the dictionary, acquisition here in my understanding is related to language abilities or language skills and of course dealing

with children.

b) Recognizing and Using Different Formula and Pattern from the Original Source to the Paraphrase Work. Recognizing text structure in this case refers to understanding meaning through analyzing the cohesive devices and discourse markers that contribute to the logical relation of ideas. Usually the aims of these strategies were to make syntactic shift of paraphrased sentence. As they realized that syntactical shift is needed in paraphrasing, all the subjects of the study applied this strategy to make their paraphrase appropriate.”When we borrow ideas from outside sources or another person’s text we should write that ideas using our own language and sentence pattern without changing the original meaning” (Subject 3)

c) Recombining the Synonym and Grammar Change in Paraphrasing. Finding and recombining synonyms seem to be one of the most productive processes in the paraphrasing tasks conducted by all of the subjects (Subject 1 to 8) since they really understood the important of using this the strategies to make appropriate paraphrasing. Before deciding to use a particular synonym of a word, subjects took some specific processes such as checking the appropriateness of the level of formality, accuracy in certain contexts, and word choices. Some of them found the synonyms from dictionary, some of them took the facility of finding synonyms on Microsoft Word program to guess the meaning of the words or check for certain synonyms. The data below reflect such a cognitive strategy:

158 P P r r o o s s i i d d i i n n g g S S e e m m i i n n a a r r N N a a s s i i o o n n a a l l H H a a s s i i l l P P e e n n e e l l i i t t i i a a n n P P e e n n d d i i d d i i k k a a n n d d a a n n P P e e m m b b e e l l a a j j a a r r a a n n V V o o l l . . 1 1 N N o o . . 1 1 T T a a h h u u n n 2 2 0 0 1 1 5 5

I try to reverse the construction … later than the German philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann.. this one recorded.. for the word recorded I will use surveillance.. of psychological and linguistic improvement of his little young oh sorry little son. So, the

paraphrasing of this sentence would be) improvement of his little son.. the new research for child language acquisition come from. So at the eight century.. OK, I will put this word in front …. So.. of the eighteen century later than .. I will try to write the paraphrasing)… Of the eighteen century, later than the German Philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann surveillance of the physiological and linguistics improvement of his little son, the new research for child language acquisition come from (Subject 6).

d) Translating the Original Source. Translating the original source is a strategy of paraphrasing used by all subjects. Using this strategy, students could bridge their lack understanding and the rules of Standard English. This cognitive strategy allows learners to use their own native language as a basis for understanding the new vocabularies or words in the second/ foreign language. Since all the subjects are not English native, this strategy is very helpful in transforming the source idea.

For subjects who have low quality paraphrasing, Subject 7 and Subject 8, translating seemed to be the main strategy to paraphrase after reading the original quotation. Subject 7 for example, when the researcher revealed her first strategies used in paraphrasing, she admitted to translate the original sentences first to Bahasa Indonesia than she paraphrased it still in Bahasa Indonesia. To make English paraphrasing, off course, she just definitely translated her paraphrase she already did in Bahasa Indonesia to the target language (English).

The first thing I did in paraphrasing was translating the sentence into Bahasa Indonesia than paraphrase it also in Bahasa Indonesia. After that to have English paraphrasing, I directly translated my paraphrased sentence in Bahasa Indonesia to English (Subject 7)

e) Summarizing the Original Source. As one of paraphrasing strategies, summarizing the original source was conducted to reduce or to simplify the original source and to capture the gist or idea of the paragraph. After analyzing the key information and difficult vocabulary in task 1, Subject 2 directly reduced or simplified the original source.

To make it simple, this sentence emphasized on how the increase of children’s vocabulary increased day by day to be combined into a sentence. So it can be written as the child

acquisition can be seen by their development on vocabularies day by day (Subject 2).

This strategy, however, was not widely used by the subject. They prefer to translate the original sentences in order to uncover the ideas of sentence rather than to summarize. Only Subject 5 and 7 applied this strategy to paraphrase.

3) Compensation Strategies. Compensation strategies help students to use the language even they have large gaps in knowledge. This strategy was intended to make up for a lack of knowledge in the areas of grammar and vocabulary.

a) Using Dictionaries or Thesaurus.

Dictionary appears to be an important tool for almost all the subjects not only to find the meaning of newly encountered words but also to confirm and check their understanding of meaning existing in their repertoire of vocabulary. During the task, all the subjects were provided with dictionary either electronic (through hand phone) or Bilingual (English-English) dictionary. The following excerpt from Subject 1 shows the utilization of dictionary:

P P r r o o s s i i d d i i n n g g S S e e m m i i n n a a r r N N a a s s i i o o n n a a l l H H a a s s i i l l P P e e n n e e l l i i t t i i a a n n P P e e n n d d i i d d i i k k a a n n d d a a n n P P e e m m b b e e l l a a j j a a r r a a n n V V o o l l . . 1 1 N N o o . . 1 1 T T a a h h u u n n 2 2 0 0 1 1 5 5 159

The word that I still do not understand here is Dates back, latter part, and the latter is acquisition. But after I searched the dictionary for word acquisition here in my understanding related to language abilities or language skills and of course dealing with children or the children. And on the back dates, which I found here is something that has done or something to do ... " (Subject 1)

b. Indirect Strategies

1) Metacognitive Strategies. These strategies go beyond purely cognitive devices and provide the students with a way to coordinate their learning process. Metacognitive strategies have positive effects to support cognitive strategies. Meaning the use of metacognitive strategies assists students in applying cognitive strategies in task completion.

a) Over Viewing and Linking with Already Known Material. This strategy dealt with over viewing comprehensively a key concept, principle, or set of materials in an upcoming language activity and associating it with what student has already known. This strategy can be accomplished in many different ways, learning why the activity is being done, building the needed vocabulary, and making the associations. Below is the example script taken from Subject 6’s verbalized report in case of linking with already known materials. “…if not mistaken, I ever known the word insight. It means wawasan (perception). For the word “derived” it comes from what come to be known as the series method” (Subject 6).

b) Identifying the Purpose of a Language Task. This strategy dealt with the subject consciousness in identifying the purpose of language task. All subjects of the study actually aware their purpose of doing the task. That was why before starting their paraphrasing task they clarified what would they do concerning the task. This strategy helped the students maintained their purpose of doing task in order to fully aware of what they doing. Quotation bellow represented the fact of her awareness of the task:

“Here, I will try to quote from many sources about Language Acquisition for Children” (Subject 1). Here I’d like to paraphrase for number one (Subject 2, Subject 4)

I have opinion that the key words of this paragraph “Modern” research on child language acquisition so I don’t need to change that sentence but I have to change

another sentence as usual I do in paraphrasing (Subject 6)

c) Self-Monitoring for the Mistakes or Problems in Paraphrasing. When the subjects got difficulties in paraphrasing the original sentence, they performed many different strategies. Many subjects performed self-monitoring as a metacognitive strategy, in order to take control over their mistakes or their difficulties when they paraphrased. Self- monitoring actually is an internal mental process in which individual record data of what they were doing in order to adjust or encounter their difficulties. It involved checking, verifying and correcting of their performance during a paraphrasing task. Subject 3, Subject 5, Subject 6, Subject 7 and Subject 8 were the subjects who often practiced this strategy.

d) Self-Evaluating for Checking Paraphrasing Work. Evaluating the full sentence of paraphrase was commonly the last step taken by all the subjects in both groups to check the accuracy of grammar and equality of meaning. This was especially visible as this strategy occurred close to the reading of the full original text before the subjects decided to stop doing the task. Subjects 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 applied this self-evaluating

160 P P r r o o s s i i d d i i n n g g S S e e m m i i n n a a r r N N a a s s i i o o n n a a l l H H a a s s i i l l P P e e n n e e l l i i t t i i a a n n P P e e n n d d i i d d i i k k a a n n d d a a n n P P e e m m b b e e l l a a j j a a r r a a n n V V o o l l . . 1 1 N N o o . . 1 1 T T a a h h u u n n 2 2 0 0 1 1 5 5 160 P P r r o o s s i i d d i i n n g g S S e e m m i i n n a a r r N N a a s s i i o o n n a a l l H H a a s s i i l l P P e e n n e e l l i i t t i i a a n n P P e e n n d d i i d d i i k k a a n n d d a a n n P P e e m m b b e e l l a a j j a a r r a a n n V V o o l l . . 1 1 N N o o . . 1 1 T T a a h h u u n n 2 2 0 0 1 1 5 5

The paraphrase will be: Furthermore the German philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann made

a note of his monitoring from his young son which is about expansion of the psychological and linguistics to the last part of the century after seventeenth (Subject 4)