FTCE Professional Education Practice Exam

When students retell information after reading, they are practicing which study skill?

1. Note-taking

2. Summarizing

3. Paraphrasing

4. Analyzing

The correct answer is: Summarizing

When students retell information after reading, they are engaged in summarizing. Summarizing involves distilling the main ideas and key points of a text into a more concise form. This practice not only helps students internalize the material but also reinforces their understanding by encouraging them to identify essential elements of what they have read. In the context of reading comprehension, summarizing requires students to synthesize various parts of the text, focusing on the overarching themes and significant details while omitting extraneous information. This skill is crucial as it promotes better retention of information and enhances critical thinking as students learn to discern what is most important. While note-taking involves recording information from a text, summarizing takes this a step further by requiring students to reinterpret and condense that information in their own words. Paraphrasing, on the other hand, involves rewording specific passages or sentences without the same emphasis on condensing the overall meaning. Analyzing involves breaking down information into its components to examine how they relate to one another, which is a different cognitive process from summarizing. Therefore, retelling information is a clear demonstration of the summarizing skill, as students practice articulating the essence of the material they have just engaged with.