In writing science summaries, student writers frequently borrow language fragments from source texts. While taking a text’s ideas verbatim is commonly considered a failure in writers’ expected use of their own words or even plagiarism, imitating “linguistic chunks” from skilled speakers is also an effective practice in language development. This study argues for the need to investigate textual borrowing (TB) from a developmental perspective. A total of 956 U.S. upper-elementary and middle school L1 students were administered a reading comprehension test, a written summary task, and a receptive academic language assessment. Multiple indices were generated to capture TB frequency, length, and one particular function of TB (i.e., definitions). Results revealed that 68% of summaries contained at least one incidence of TB. As expected, both TB frequency and length were negatively associated with reading comprehension and academic language skills. However, students in higher grades demonstrated significantly more and longer TB in comparison to their younger counterparts when summarizing the same passage. In addition, the frequency of borrowed word strings and the ratio of definitional borrowing were positively associated with summary writing quality, and the latter association was found to be stronger for students with higher academic language skills. Implications for pedagogy and future research are discussed.

在撰写科学摘要时，学生作家经常从源文本中借用语言片段。逐字记录文本的想法通常被认为是作者期望自己使用自己的单词甚至抄袭的失败，而模仿熟练的演讲者的“语言块”也是语言发展的一种有效做法。这项研究认为有必要从发展的角度研究文本借用（TB）。总共对956名美国高中和初中L1学生进行了阅读理解测试，书面总结任务和接受性学术语言评估。生成了多个索引来捕获TB的频率，长度和TB的一种特定功能（即定义）。结果显示，摘要中68％至少包含一种结核病。不出所料 结核病的发生频率和时间长短与阅读理解能力和学术语言技能均呈负相关。但是，总结相同的段落时，高年级的学生与年轻的学生相比，结核病的发病率要高得多，而且病程更长。此外，借用单词字符串的频率和定义借用比例与摘要写作质量呈正相关，而对于具有较高学术语言技能的学生，后者的关联性更强。讨论了对教学法和未来研究的影响。借用词串的频率和定义借用的比例与摘要写作质量呈正相关，而对于具有较高学术语言技能的学生来说，后者的关联性更强。讨论了对教学法和未来研究的影响。借用词串的频率和定义借用的比例与摘要写作质量呈正相关，而对于具有较高学术语言技能的学生来说，后者的关联性更强。讨论了对教学法和未来研究的影响。