The Effectiveness of Concept Mapping for Writing
By : Fajhri Agustin K
Abstract
The skill of writing was very important for the students. It needs to be taught to the students at
school. Teachers used numbers of strategies to help the students wrote more effectively.
Concept mapping was one of those strategies which could activate the students’ learning. This
study is an attempt to investigate the effect of using concept mapping as a prewriting strategy.
The researcher used quasi-experimental research design. Then, the researcher determined
which group belonged to experimental group and which group belonged to control group. In
this case, the experimental group was given a treatment using concept mapping and the control
group was treated without using concept mapping. In the experimental group, 20 students were
taught by concept mapping strategy and 20 students of control group were taught by the
conventional teaching method as outlined in the Teacher’s Book. To collect the data, a pre-test
and a post-test was utilized. Based on the result of data analysis on the post-test the
experimental and control groups, the students’ achievement of the experimental group in
paragraph writing was better than those in control group. it is found out that there is a
significant development in the experimental group students’ achievement in organization,
content and style and quality of expression. This indicates that using concept mapping as a
prewriting strategy is more effective than the presentation- practice- production teaching or the
Lecture Method teaching. Conclusions, recommendations and suggestions for further studies
are put forward.
Introduction
Used as a learning and teaching technique, concept mapping visually illustrates the
relationships between concepts and ideas. Often represented in circles or boxes, concepts are
linked by words and phrases that explain the connection between the ideas, helping students
organize and structure their thoughts to further understand information and discover new
relationships. Most concept maps represent a hierarchical structure, with the overall, broad
concept first with connected sub-topics, more specific concepts, following.
Traditionally, concepts maps have been used as a tool to engage students in learning
content knowledge. However, concepts maps can also be used as a tool to facilitate writing.
Previous research indicated that concepts maps has a positive effect on the students’ abilities
to select concepts that appropriate to respond to a writing prompt, integrate facts into complete
thoughts and writing ideas, and apply it in novel situations (Conklin, 2007). Concepts map
appear to facilitate learning and how to process information and transform it in to expository
writing. Concepts map provide students the freedom to express their knowledge on a given
topic and present insights into the way they organize knowledge (Gouli, Gogoulou, &
Grigoriadou, 2003) or as a tool to help students and teachers visualize the direction or focus of
a research paper (Crane 1998).
Consequently, a concept map may be use as an aid in helping students structure a well
organized paper. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how students perceived
concept maps as a tool in facilitating writing in their writing assignment. This is important to
see the variety of ways the students used concept maps and how it could facilitate their writing.
The Theoritical Framework
Generally, the role of writing skill is crucial for international communication with
others in English along with succeeding in academic cores of study. Of particular interest,
mastering writing skill enables EFL learners to acquire English words and sentences effectively
(Bello,1997). Further, writing helps learners to keep track the learning process details
(Ahangari& Behzady,2011). Nevertheless, it is reported as the most difficult skill to be
acquired as it involves a number of skills and conventions (Nik, Hamzah&Rafidee, 2010;
Yunus, Nordin, Embi&Salehi, 2013). It's true that writing is an essential skill in learning
English as a foreign language. In this regard, White (1987) states that writing is used to examine
a student’s performance in English. Rao (2007) also believes that writing helps to motivate
students' thinking, organize ideas, and develop their ability to summarize, analyze and criticize
as well as strengthening students' learning, thinking and reflecting on the English language.
Concept mapping is a pre-task planning process that involves drawing diagrams of
circled ideas and links connecting them (Figure 1). Novak and Cañas (2008) claim that drawing
this type of diagram allows writers to organize ideas in a hierarchical order and see how one
concept is related to another concept. This technique has been widely used in language learning
for memorizing vocabulary (Morin & Goebel, 2001; Johnson & Steele, 1996) and has been
found to facilitate the process of writing (Lee, 2013). Schultz (1991) also argues that concept
mapping helps learners to visualize their ideas as multidimensional constructs that imitate the
movement of thought. In relation to planning, Ojima (2006) claims that concept mapping can
activate students’ prior knowledge about a topic. Ojima tried to explore the effect of concept
mapping on students’ writing development; however, she did not examine the effect of the
technique statistically with a large number of participants and she did not determine whether
concept mapping would aid students with high anxiety. Therefore, the present study focuses
on how concept mapping can affect students’ writing and whether this technique can aid highly
anxious students.
Apllication of Concept Mapping for Writing
There are several ways to construct concept maps. Most include the following steps:
1. Model how to identify the major ideas or concepts presented in a selection of text as
you read.
2. Organize the ideas into categories. Remind students that your organization may change
as you continue to read and add more information.
3. Use lines or arrows on the map to represent how ideas are connected to one another, a
particular category, and/or the main concept. Limit the amount of information on the
map to avoid frustration.
4. After students have finished the map, encourage them to share and reflect on how they
each made the connections between concepts.
5. Encourage students to use the concept map to summarize what was read.
Conclusion
Concept mapping is a technique for visualizing the relationships or connections among
different concepts. Concept mapping was one of those strategies which could activate the
students’ learning. This study result found that concept mapping can be a tool to facilitate
students in writing. Concept mapping helps them in generating ideas, able to relate the ideas or
contents to each other, and also as a visual representation of what is going to be written. It helps
students to focus on their topic and helps sequencing the flow of writing. It also acts as a
planning and organizing tool for writing. Student of all ages would benefit using concept maps
as it is easy to use. Concept map should be taught to all students as it helps students to construct
their own understanding.
References:
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/concept_maps
Al- Zyoud, A. A., Al Jamal, D., & Baniabdelrahman, A. (2017). Mind Mapping and Students'
Writing Performance. Arab World English Journal, 8 (4).
