without enough associations, other details scatter all the way through and they
might not even be selected for attention.
8.6.6 Argument 6
Paraphrase facilitates meaning construction. Rost (1994b: 110) concluded that there
was a wide use of“juxtaposition strategy”in the subjects’online summaries of the
academic lecture. It means students put two key words together with a vague link
between them. Similarly, Brown and Day (1983) used another term as“copy and
delete”strategy and Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) adopted“verbatim”to indicate the
same thing. Verbatim doesn’t necessarily reflect students’ comprehension; on
the contrary, it sometimes leads to“creative anomalies”(Rost 1994b: 111). In the
current project, verbatim in retelling might not necessarily lead to“anomalies”, but
the low use of verbatim shows it’s hard to retell word for word exactly in the same
manner as the original script. Deletion of propositional units can be an effective
strategy while selecting useful information but“verbatim responses are not a
Theme Key pointDetailKey pointDetailDetailDetailDetailDetail DetailDetail
DetailFig. 8.3 Successful listeners’meaning construction..................
ThemeKey pointDetailKey pointDetailDetailDetailDetailDetail DetailDetail DetailDetailFig. 8.4 Less successful listeners’meaning construction...............
8.6 Test-Takers’Cognitive Behavior... 145