Copy of LUẬN VĂN.Nguyen thi my trang-K19A2

HANOI UNIVERSITYDEPARTMENT OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI MY TRANG THE EFFECTS OF CONCEPT MAPPING STRATEGY ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ ESP READING COMPREHENSION AT UNIVERSITY OF

HANOI UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN THI MY TRANG

THE EFFECTS OF CONCEPT MAPPING STRATEGY

ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’

ESP READING COMPREHENSION

AT UNIVERSITY OF TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements

Of the degree of master in tesol

SUPERVISOR: HOANG VAN HOAT, M.A.

Hanoi, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

ABSTRACT ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Aims and research questions 4

1.3 Scope of the study 4

1.4 Significance of the study 4

1.5 Organization of the thesis 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Reading 6

2.1.1 Definition of reading 6

2.1.2 ESP reading 7

2.1.3 Reading Strategies 7

2.1.3.1 Definition of Reading Strategies 8

2.1.3.2 Role of Reading Strategies 8

2.1.4 Principles of effective reading instruction 9

2.1.5 Stages of a reading lesson 10

2.1.5.1 Pre-reading 10

2.1.5.2 While-reading 11

2.1.5.3 Post-reading 12

2.2 Reading comprehension 12

2.2.1 Definition of reading comprehension 13

2.2.2 Factors affecting reading comprehension 14

2.2.2.1 Background knowledge 14

2.2.2.2 Motivation 15

2.2.2.3 Learning strategies 15

2.2.2.4 Materials 16

2.3 Concept mapping 17

2.3.1 Definition of concept maps and concept mapping 17

2.3.2 Benefits of Concept mapping on reading comprehension 19

2.3.3 Steps in constructing a concept map 22

2.3.4 Types of concept mapping technique versions in previous research 23

2.3.5 Concept mapping techniques used in the current experiment and the reasons for this choice 24

2.4 Previous research related to the effects of Concept mapping on reading comprehension ability 26

2.5 Summary 29

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 30

3.1 Research questions restated 30

3.2 Variables 30

3.2.1 Independent variable 31

3.2.2 Dependent variables 31

3.3 Subjects 31

3.3.1 The Teacher - the researcher 31

3.3.2 The students 32

3.4 Data collection instruments 33

3.4.1 Reading comprehension test 33

3.4.2 Questionnaire 35

3.5 Data analysis 37

3.5.1 Test data analysis 37

3.5.2 Questionnaire data analysis 38

3.6 Procedures 38

3.6.1 Experiment procedure 38

3.6.2 Data collection procedure 40

3.7 Summary 41

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 42

4.1 Results 42

4.1.1 Results of the reading comprehension tests 42

4.1.1.1 Pre-test and Post-test results within each group 42

4.1.1.2 Test results between Control and Experimental groups 46

4.1.2 Results of the questionnaire 49

4.2 Discussions 55

4.2.1 Effects of CM strategy on non-English major students’ ESP reading comprehension proficiency 55

4.2.2 Students’ attitudes towards CM strategy 57

4.3 Summary 58

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 60

5.1 Implications 60

5.2 Limitations of the study 62

5.3 Recommendations for further research 62

5.4 Conclusion 63

REFERENCES 65

APPENDIX 1A E3 SCORE SHEET OF 62CCKT05 69

APPENDIX 1B E3 SCORE SHEET OF 62CCKT07 71

APPENDIX 1C THE COMPARISON OF E3 RESULTS BETWEEN 62CCKT05 AND 62CCKT07 by paired-samples t-test 73

APPENDIX 2A UNIT 4 74

APPENDIX 2B A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR CONTROL GROUP 80

APPENDIX 2C A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR EXPERIMENTAL GROUP USING

MAP-CORRECTION CM 83

APPENDIX 2D HAND-OUT OF THE CONCEPT MAP OF UNIT 4 90

APPENDIX 2E THE COMPLETE CONCEPT MAP ABOUT ECONOMIC SYSTEMS 91

APPENDIX 3A UNIT 5 92

APPENDIX 3B A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR EXPERIMENTAL GROUP USING FILL-IN-MAP CM 98

APPENDIX 3C HAND-OUT OF THE CONCEPT MAP OF UNIT 5 104

APPENDIX 3D THE COMPLETE CONEPT MAP ABOUT INFLATION 105

APPENDIX 4A PRE-READING COMPREHENSION TEST 106

APPENDIX 4B KEYS TO THE PRE-TEST 111

APPENDIX 5A POST-READING COMPREHENSION TEST 112

APPENDIX 5B KEYS TO THE POST-TEST 117

APPENDIX 6 PRE- AND POST-TEST RESULTS OF TWO GROUPS 118

APPENDIX 7A CM ATTITUDE QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH VERSION) 121

APPENDIX 7B PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA THÁI ĐỘ CỦA NGƯỜI HỌC ĐỐI VỚI CHIẾN LƯỢC LẬP SƠ ĐỒ KHÁI NIỆM (BẢN TIẾNG VIỆT) 124

APPENDIX 8 SOME ORIGINAL COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS 127

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks and most sincereappreciation to my supervisor, Mr Hoang Van Hoat, M.A for his patient guidance,orientations in helping me choose the topic for the thesis as well as hisencouragement, critical comments, and constant support during my doing this M.A.thesis with all his heart

Secondly, I would acknowledge my great gratitude to Ms Nguyen Thai Ha, M.A., thelecturer of Research Methods for her willing support, guidance, and invaluableknowledge for research theoretically With her wholehearted assistance, I can now notonly know how to search for and read needed materials, journals effectively, but canalso take the basic steps in doing research

Thirdly, I am very thankful to all other lecturers and organizers at Department ofPostgraduate Studies – Hanoi University for their providing me with usefulknowledge during the Master course

My special thanks also go to the students of class 62CCKT05 and 62CCKT07 of theDepartment of Economics at University of Transport Technology (UTT) for theirwillingness to take part in the study Without their help, this research could not havebeen so successful

I am additionally in deeply indebted to my friends, my classmates, and my colleagues

as well for their useful help, comments, and criticism

Last but not least, I would like to send my heart-felt gratitude to my family who haveconstantly inspired and encouraged me throughout the study

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CM : Concept mapping

CMs : Concept maps

E1 : The first English subject at UTT

E2 : The second English subject at UTT

E3 : The third English subject at UTT

E4 : The fourth English subject at UTT

EFL : English as a foreign language

ESL : English as a second language

ESP : English for Special Purpose

SLA : Second Language Acquisition

SPSS : Statistical Package for Social Sciences

UTT : University of Transport Technology

LIST OF TABLE

Table 3.1 Background information of participants of the experiment 33

Table 3.2 The experiment and data collection procedures 41

Table 4.1 Results of Pre- and Post-test of the Control group 43

Table 4.2 Results of Pre- and Post-test of the Experimental group 45

Table 4.3 The test results between Control group and Experimental group 47

Table 4.4 The section test results between Control and Experimental groups 48

Table 4.5 Students' assessment on the effectiveness of CM strategy 51

Table 4.6 Students' view on the use of CM strategy in ESP lessons 53

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 A concept map about Concept Maps by Novak & Cañas (2008, p2) 18

Figure 2.2 A Generalized concept map 19

Figure 4.1 Results of Pre- and Post-test of the Control group 43

Figure 4.2 Results of Pre- and Post-test of the Experimental group 45

Figure 4.3 The Test Results between Control group and Experimental group 47

Figure 4.4 The Section Test Results between Control and Experimental Group 49

In an attempt to improve non-English major students’ ESP reading comprehensionskills at the University of Transport Technology (UTT), the research aims atinvestigating the effects of concept mapping (CM) strategy on non-English majorstudents’ ESP reading comprehension as well as the students’ attitudes towards the

CM To find the answers to these questions, an experimental design was chosen tocarry out the study The subjects of the study were 81 students, including 62 femalesand 19 males They were all the second year non-English major students, specializing

in Accounting and their level of English proficiency was high elementary To ensurethat differences in the results of the study were due to the difference in the treatment,the researcher chose two intact classes as participants of the study due to the results ofthe last GE achievement exam (E3 achievement exam) in January, 2013 on scheduleand the researcher’s knowledge about these two classes while teaching them E3 in thefirst semester of the second year The experimental group was taught using CMstrategy in reading comprehension lessons while the control group was taught by “thetraditional way” The data of the study were collected by means of an ESP readingcomprehension test and an attitude questionnaire The data collected from the ESPreading comprehension test results were computed and analyzed by means of t-tests,using paired-samples t-tests with SPSS version 16.0 to measure the students’ ESPreading comprehension proficiency before and after the experiment The datacollected from the questionnaire were converted into percentage to investigatestudents’ attitudes towards CM strategy

The results of the study revealed that students’ ESP reading comprehensionproficiency increased significantly when CM strategy was applied Moreover, thefindings of the research showed that students had positive attitudes towards the use of

CM strategy in ESP lessons Therefore, the study concludes that CM strategy maycontribute to the students’ ESP reading comprehension ability and recommends that

CM strategy should be applied in teaching reading ESP

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The current study is intended to investigate the effects of CM strategy on ESP readingcomprehension of non-English major students at UTT It begins with this introductorychapter, which describes the background to the study and indicates the aims and researchquestions It also discusses the scope, the significance of the study and provides theorganization of the thesis

1.1 Background to the study

As studies indicate that the ability to read and to comprehend is considered one of the mostimportant and basic skills for a person to learn and educate Research findings in appliedlinguistics and reading research consistently show a strong correlation between readingproficiency and academic success at all ages (Pretorius, 2000) Thus, it can be said thatwithout reading comprehension skills, readers cannot gather any information and use it toefficiently function and enjoy the richness of life

At UTT, after finishing 180 periods (each lasts 45 minutes) of GE program, of which 120

periods are spent on the course-book “New English File” - Elementary (Oxenden,

Latham-Koenig, & Seligson, 2004) and divided equally into two subjects named E1 and E2 in thefirst and second semester of the first academic year, and the rest 60 periods is for another

subject called E3 covering the first five units in “New English File”– Pre-intermediate in

the first semester of the second year, students have to take an ESP course (called E4) in thesecond semester of the second year In the ESP courses, English learning focuses mainly

on reading, so does English for Economics English for Economics compiled by teachers of

English from the English Division – UTT includes 10 units which are taught in 60 periodswith an aim to provide students vocabulary, terms related to economics, reading skills aswell as some basic grammatical structures so that after the course, students will be able tocomprehend and utilize a certain number of economic terms, comprehend, analyze, andtranslate English materials, books, and magazines in Economic field (Curriculumspecifications: English for Economics, 2009, UTT) Finishing this course, students areassessed through a written exam with a focus on examining ESP reading comprehension

performance, specialty words, terms, including specialty knowledge of students in English.Therefore, reading, especially reading comprehension obviously plays an important rolefor students at Economics Department in particular and for all students in ESP classes atUTT in general.

However, there is a fact that after finishing 180 periods of GE program at UTT, thestudents still possess inadequate reading comprehension skills, which is a big constraint forthem to follow ESP courses Due to this problem, many of them lose their interest inreading ESP texts (To Van Hoa, 2008) and this could lead to the students’ failure inprevious ESP courses

As observed and discussed, the researcher knows that there are two main causes to thisproblem: uninteresting, inappropriate current teaching method and the difference between

GE and ESP In fact, although UTT teachers of English still follow three stages: Pre-,While-, and Post-reading in ESP reading lessons, it seems to be ineffective and challengingfor students to get the requirements of a reading text Specifically, in Pre-reading stage,teachers usually try to elicit students’ prior knowledge related to the topic by asking themsome questions However, it is obvious that students have difficulty in answering orexpressing what they want to say in English although they have learned the subjectknowledge in Vietnamese As a result, they always answer the teacher’s questions inVietnamese which is meaningless in ESP reading lessons In While- reading stage, teachersusually ask students to read the text individually in silence or aloud before doing thefollow-up reading comprehension exercises The lessons are often ended by a summary ofthe text and then a translation of the passage into Vietnamese but once again the studentshave difficulty in summarizing the text because they cannot organize and connect the ideas

in such a long text as ESP texts The pedagogical results of this approach are that thelessons become boring; students do not have effective reading strategies In fact, whenbeing asked about what reading strategies they usually use, most of them express that theytry to read and comprehend the reading texts word by word; some say that they usuallytranslate the texts into Vietnamese while reading, others pay too much attention tovocabulary, few get the gist of the passage by skimming and no one scans to get the neededinformation or finds the key words As a result, they read slowly, read withoutunderstanding accordingly as their memory is taxed by the inability to retain information in

sufficiently large chunks to progress through a text (Bell, 2001), especially long texts in

English for Economics

Moreover, the difference between GE and ESP is another difficulty for students to follow

an ESP course Texts in GE refer to such various topics as music, food, sports, everydaycommunication… whereas texts in ESP are more specific and even longer with a lot ofspecialty vocabulary, even some words which are familiar to students in GE but are notfully explicable in ESP reading In addition, the way in which language is used in an ESPtext is not the same as in a GE text (Dudley Evans & St John, 1998) For this reason, ESPreading is, of course, more complicated, difficult, and boring than GE reading Take

English for Economics at UTT as an example, all the texts are economics based and

informative With the average length of about from 250 to 400 words even more, each textconsists of about 15 to 20 new words, most of which are specialized terms or concepts andhave different meanings from those in GE like ‘exchange rate, full employment, fiscalpolicy, balance of payment, interest rate…’ What is more, about 25 to 35 compound andcomplex sentences exist in each text This is the reason why understanding an ESP textfully is really challenging for students at high elementary

Being aware of the current problem posed to the students in ESP classes at UTT, thereneeds to be a call for a new teaching method, a more appropriate reading strategy providedfor the students in order to help them improve their ESP reading comprehensionperformance not only to do well in ESP final exams but also to use it effectively inworkplaces after graduation Studies indicate that proficient comprehension requiresidentifying the main ideas and making connections between relevant information.Knowledge of the textual clues indicating important ideas or phrases, and how these ideasconnect to supporting details helps readers comprehend more efficiently This allowsreaders to create a macrostructure of what they are reading and they remember that, ratherthan the entire text (Berkowitz, 1986) This practice helps readers to engage in high level-thinking about what they are reading Therefore, after considering various readingstrategies, the researcher was encouraged by the related studies indicating that CM strategycan fulfill these requirements because of its benefits (see 2.3.2) With its benefits, theresearcher had come to an assumption that it might help minimize the main causes to theproblem mentioned above Therefore, the researcher planned to do an experimental study

on the topic to get a better understanding about CM strategy and its effects on the students’ESP reading comprehension improvement with the hope that this strategy can effectivelyreplace the traditional one.

1.2 Aims and research questions

This study aims at investigating whether CM strategy is more effective than the currentteaching method at UTT in improving students’ ESP reading comprehension Moreover,the students’ attitudes towards CM strategy are also examined Therefore, in order to meetthese requirements, the study aims at answering the following research questions:

1 To what extent does CM strategy improve non-English major students’ ESP reading comprehension?

2 What are the students’ attitudes towards CM strategy?

1.3 Scope of the study

Students’ low reading comprehension ability of ESP materials is a mutual concern amongteachers of English at UTT Research has pointed out the significance and the effectiveness

of CM strategy on students’ reading comprehension In fact, a lot of CM techniques aresuggested and the value of such techniques is frequently stressed, particularly in L2settings However, due to the time constraint, the researcher decided to carry out the

experiment on the application of two CM techniques including Map-correction technique and Fill-in-map CM technique with the participation of 81 non – English major students at

UTT in ten weeks

1.4 Significance of the study

Reading comprehension has been a concern of each classroom teacher, especially ESPteacher in institutions where ESP syllabuses mainly focus on reading and comprehendingspecialist materials like at UTT Therefore, searching for what strategies work in helpingstudents to build reading comprehension skills is imperative so that students can haveevery opportunity to experience success With the aim to investigate the effects of areading strategy - CM strategy - on the improvement of ESP reading comprehensionproficiency and their attitudes towards the given reading strategy, the findings of the study

will hopefully bring teachers of English in general and the teachers of English at UTT inparticular more practical ideas on the role of CM strategy as well as the way to apply it inlanguage learning, especially in the teaching of ESP reading so as to make it moreeffective It is also hoped that through the application of CM in Pre-reading, While-reading, and Post-reading stages in ESP classes, the study will help shift the ESP classesfrom teacher-centered to learner-centered and learning centered.

1.5 Organization of the thesis

Besides references and appendixes, the thesis consists of five chapters, organized asfollows:

Chapter I – Introduction – provides the information about the background to the study,

the aims and research questions, scope of the study, as well as the significance and theorganization of the thesis

Chapter II – Literature review – provides the theoretical background of reading, reading

comprehension, CM strategy, and the relationship between CM and readingcomprehension This part also presents the previous studies related to the CM strategy onreading comprehension improvement

Chapter III – Methodology – describes the research method chosen for the study, which

involves the five basic components of the experiment: variables, subjects, data collectioninstruments, data analysis, and procedures

Chapter IV – The results and discussions – includes the presentation, analysis of the data

collected from the tests and questionnaire, and discussions of the findings on the effects of

CM strategy on students’ ESP reading comprehension and their attitudes to applying CMstrategy in ESP lessons

Chapter V – Conclusions and recommendations – summarizes the findings of the study

and draws some conclusions from the findings It then presents some pedagogicalimplications, some limitations of the study It ends with some recommendations for furtherresearch

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents a brief review of the literature relevant to the study It consists of twosections The first section deals with the theoretical background of (1) reading includingdefinition of reading, ESP reading, reading strategies, principles of effective readinginstruction and stages of a reading lesson; (2) reading comprehension comprised ofdefinition of reading comprehension and factors affecting reading comprehension; and (3)

CM strategy covered with definition of CM, benefits of CM, steps in constructing aconcept map, CM techniques used in previous research and in the current study Thesecond section focuses on the previous research

All in all, what all the linguists have in common is that reading involves a variety of skillsand reading usually means comprehending written language so when understanding breaksdown, reading actually does not occur Reading is the process which involves the surfacerepresentation encoded by a writer and ends with interpretation of the written text and

interchanges between the writer and the reader The reader utilizes all resources toconstruct meaning So, teachers must view the text, in conjunction with students’ priorknowledge, student strategies, the task and the classroom situation as a whole to achievecomprehension

To sum up, once again, reading is a complex process that is affected by many factors So,

if a reader is totally unfamiliar with a text, they will fail to understand it Therefore, as far

as the author knows, teachers must find out the appropriate reading strategies applied inESP reading lessons as a scaffolding so as to help students create a macrostructure of whatthey are reading and they remember that, rather than the entire text and to easily elicitstudents’ background knowledge prior to reading, promote their motivation

2.1.2 ESP reading

As stated in 1.1, ESP has been seen different from GE GE is aimed to teach generallanguage proficiency while ESP is an approach to language teaching in which the contentsand the goals of an ESP course are fixed by the specific needs of a particular group oflearners (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987) A text in GE refers to different spheres of life:culture, literature, everyday communication… but a text in ESP is used for specificpurposes such as: science and technology, economics For this reason, ESP reading is ofcourse more complicated, difficult, and boring than GE reading There are a lot ofspecialized terms which are not easy for students to understand Besides, some wordswhich are familiar to students in GE but are not fully explicable in ESP reading, whichleads to difficulty in understanding an ESP text Therefore, students cannot understand anESP text fully in terms of the statements and explanations found in traditional grammars ormodern linguistic descriptions but they can only understand it after paying attention to thepurpose of the text and the structure and function of its various components

Understanding the difference between ESP and GE reading, the researcher hopes to find asuitable method of teaching and learning reading ESP and looking at such components asreading activities, reading skills, and especially reading strategies involved in reading

2.1.3 Reading Strategies

This part provides readers with definition and the role of reading strategies

2.1.3.1 Definition of Reading Strategies

Reading strategies are not only for how related the use of strategies to effective readingcomprehension but also for what to reveal about the ways readers manage their interactionswith written texts

In terms of reading strategies, understanding what they are is necessary Brown (2001)defines reading strategies as specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes ofoperation for achieving a particular end, or planned designs for controlling andmanipulating certain information Brantmeier (as cited in Phan Ngan, 2006) states thatreading strategies may involve skimming, scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates andword families, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general knowledge, makinginferences, following references, and separating main ideas from supporting ideas

To support the definitions above, Baker and Boonkit (2004) also defines them astechniques and methods that readers use to make their reading successful Some of readingstrategies include skimming, scanning, summarizing, guessing, predicting, makinginference, underlying words or phrases, and taking note

All in all, it can be concluded that reading strategies are tools to make reading successful

In other words, reading strategies help readers comprehend what the reading text is about

2.1.3.2 Role of Reading Strategies

Reading strategies play a very important role in reading comprehension especially whenlearners become centered in teaching and learning process now

Numerous studies on reading strategies assure that reading strategies can facilitatestudents’ reading comprehension Wong (2010) states that good readers are able to usemore and diverse reading strategies to achieve success in reading while poor readers lackthe development of reading strategies In other words, the reading performance of thestudents who use reading strategies is better than that of those who do not receive suchtraining

Furthermore, researchers also believe that the effective use of reading strategies alsopromotes learners’ autonomy and creates independent readers as it enables learners to self-direct their individual reading processes (Allen, 2003) This means that readers need tohave appropriate reading strategies to control their reading comprehension and to shiftgoals for reading.

To sum up, reading strategies are comprehension processes that enable readers to constructmeaning from the text most effectively They show how readers tackle a reading task, howthey interpret their reading and what they do when they do not comprehend It can, thus, besaid that reading strategies are really essential in promoting students’ readingcomprehension Once they are identified, the learners will know why they are poor readersand the teachers can decide what they should do to help their learners improve theirreading comprehension

2.1.4 Principles of effective reading instruction

To help ESL/EFL students become strategic and independent readers is the goal ofteaching reading According to Nunan (2000), reading is usually misconceived as a solitaryactivity in which the reader interacts with the text in isolation In fact, reading is a complexprocess, especially in a L2/FL because readers need to construct meaning throughculturally determined cognitive frameworks Reading is now seen as communication, amanipulation of strategies, a receptive rather than a passive skill From the research intoeffective L2 reading teachers, Richards (1989) has concluded nine principles of effectivereading instruction:

(1) Instructional objectives are used to guide and organize the lessons

(2) The teacher has a comprehensive theory of the nature of reading on a L2

(3) Class-time is used for learning, which means students are “on task” for fifty of thesixty minutes

(4) Instructional activities have a teaching rather than a testing focus The teacherprovides opportunities for learners to develop and improve skills and strategiesrather than demonstrating mastery of such skills

(5) Lessons have a clear structure The structure is outlined to students, and eachactivity must be clearly framed

(6) A variety of different reading activities are used during each lesson

(7) Classroom activities give students opportunities to get feedback on their readingperformance The teacher provides information on the kinds of strategies used fordifferent tasks, and on the effectiveness of these strategies

(8) Instructional activities relate to real-world reading purposes

(9) Instruction is learner focused Learners are encouraged to try and work things outfor themselves

From Richard’s principles of effective reading instruction, teaching reading must belearner-centered, which requires teachers to design a variety of reading activities in order

to motivate students to be “on-task” almost all the time

Traditionally, attempts to improve the comprehension of texts for EFL students havefocused on familiarizing the student with the vocabulary needed to comprehend thepassage However, such instruction is unlikely to raise the students’ interest in reading thetext or to prepare them for the culturally and conceptually novel elements of the text.Studies on CM strategy, a learner-centered approach as Khajavi & Ketabi (2012) state,have demonstrated their facilitative effectiveness on helping students identify the mainideas, activating readers’ prior knowledge relevant to the new text, making the reading taskeasier and more enjoyable, bringing about meaningful learning …, which helps studentscomprehend more efficiently (see more at 2.3.2)

2.1.5 Stages of a reading lesson

Contemporary reading tasks helping to develop reading ability, unlike the traditionalmaterials, involve a three-phase procedure: Pre-, While-, and Post-reading stages(Williams, 1984) It is affirmed that all three stages are very important in teaching reading,and they are related to one another Also, each of these stages carries its own features andpurposes and requires different techniques and strategies

2.1.5.1 Pre-reading

Lee and Vanpatten (1995) state that L2 learners need help bring their knowledge to bear onthe process of comprehension Therefore, the initial phase of the instructional frameworkmust activate learners’ background knowledge Varaprasad (1997) claims that the pre-reading stage attempts to improve students' interest in the topic and motivate them; toprovide some predicting/guessing activities for the reading passage; to make use ofstudents’ background knowledge about the topic, to prepare the students for the context ofthe reading passage; to build a bridge between the reading passage and the learners’background knowledge Ur (1996) also agrees that activating readers’ prior knowledge of atopic before they begin to read may help students’ comprehension He argues that tasksmake the activity more interesting since readers have a purpose in reading and also thereading teacher may see how well the text is understood with the help of tasks given beforeand after reading

To sum up, the pre-reading stage helps to make the next stages of reading more easilyadaptable for the reader As the reader progresses along the necessary reading stages, moreskills begin to develop Therefore, this stage is very important to orient students to anynew material they do not know, to activate schema for previous knowledge of a topic, and

to help motivate students Also, without the pre-reading stage, the task (while-reading)might be more difficult and progressively less enjoyable As a result, the reader maystruggle and may withdraw from reading

In English classes, especially in ESP classes, usually students read a text not because theywant to but because their teacher tells them to, or simply because it is there So, in order tomotivate them to read, it is important to give them the purposes for reading and scaffoldingactivities so that their prior knowledge can easily be activated It is affirmed that CM

techniques (Fill-in-map and Map- correction) can do this task well.

2.1.5.2 While-reading

According to Williams (1984), While-reading stage is the main part of a reading lessonwith specific aims including: to help students’ understanding of the writer’s purpose; tohelp students’ understanding of the text structure; to clarify text content Richards (1990)

considers reading as an integration of top-down processes utilizing background knowledgeand schema and bottom-up processes that are primarily text or data driven In this case,students should be encouraged and stimulated to use both of the two processes, top-downand bottom-up when actually tackling any reading text The students, on one hand, might

be asked to treat the text as a whole to get the general picture without being too concernedwith the details, i.e., skimming the text to pick out main points rapidly On the other hand,they might be asked to look at a text and extract specific information, i.e., scanning the text

to find out a fact that they are interested in or asked for Thus, whether one skims or scans,

it depends on the purposes of the reader

Therefore, during this stage, CM techniques can be applied to help facilitate students toskim for the main idea, scan for the secondary categories, or read intensively for thesupporting ideas It is believed that this strategy might be useful to intervene in the readingprocess in some way, making learners to be more active as they read and thus it might help

to encourage critical thinking and increase students’ comprehension and easy retention inESP lessons

2.1.5.3 Post-reading

The post-reading stage is the final but not the less important stage of a reading lessonbecause it is time for students to apply what they have got from the text into real lifecommunication According to Chastain (1988), post-reading activities help readers toclarify any unclear meaning where the focus is on the meaning not on the grammatical orlexical aspects of the text Ur (1996) discusses summary as a kind of post-reading activitywhere the readers are asked to summarize the content in one or two sentences Karakas(2002) proposes that the readers interpret the text and illustrate the relationship betweenthe questions and answers and draw conclusions and it is possible to catch the missingparts of the mental picture through thinking aloud, discussion and summarizing

In summary, each of the three reading stages carries its own aims and activities It is veryeffective if these three stages are combined flexibly and appropriately for an efficient ESPreading lesson in general so that students can easily understand an ESP reading text

2.2 Reading comprehension

This section aims to provide readers with not only definition of reading comprehension butalso factors affecting reading comprehension

2.2.1 Definition of reading comprehension

There is a great deal of research that stresses the importance of comprehension in reading

Thus, it is necessary to understand the nature of reading comprehension There are

different definitions of reading comprehension

According to Grellet (1981, p.3), “Reading comprehension or understanding a written textmeans extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.” The authormeans that reading comprehension is an activity which aims at decoding the meaning of

word combination in the text in the most efficient way and students can show their understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways such as summarizing

the text, answering questions etc Therefore, it is not enough in the context of this study.Clement (1991, p.43) considers “comprehension is building bridges between the new andthe known”, which means reading comprehension is the process of relating the newinformation on the printed page to the information already stored in memory, i.e., thereader’s existing knowledge The printed page guides comprehension but it is notcomprehension The readers read the text and search for its meaning As readers interactwith the text, their own background knowledge facilitates comprehension Obviously, thisdefinition fails to help readers get the whole meaning of reading comprehension since itonly mentions the combination of the prior knowledge with the new one

Given the fact that there is hardly any definition that can work in all contexts, it isnecessary to give out a working definition for this study Considering some definitions andthe context of the study, our working definition is that reading comprehension is theprocess of decoding language to thought or working out the meaning of a reading text İnthis process, the reader has to make an effort to extract the required information from theprinted text as efficiently as possible This means the reader has to employ the variousways to facilitate the understanding of the text Reading comprehension is not only afunction of the interplay between language and what the brain does with it, it also requires

the activation of contextual information and previous knowledge Consequently, readingcomprehension is like the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaningthrough interaction and involvement with written language through which readers can re-expressing the content of the text by summarizing the text, answering questions etc….

In conclusion, reading comprehension, primary purpose for reading, is a process ofunderstanding what is conveyed in the text It does not mean that the reader needs tounderstand every single word in the text but actively work on the text and extract therequired information efficiently Fluent reading involves both decoding and interpretationskills; and raising students' awareness of main ideas in a text and exploring theorganization of a text are essential for good comprehension

2.2.2 Factors affecting reading comprehension

Looking closely at factors affecting the extent to which learners comprehend a readinglesson and obtaining the best achievement in second language acquisition (SLA) is veryessential Oxford (1990) presents a variety of factors influencing reading comprehension.However, only some of the factors that directly affect the way the students at UTT learnreading ESP are mentioned in the following sections They are background knowledge,teacher’s teaching methods, learning strategies, material, motivation, and vocabulary

2.2.2.1 Background knowledge

Background knowledge has a significant effect on the readers’ comprehension It canensure the success in reading for the reader if he possesses it, but it may also lead to failure

in comprehending a reading passage if the reader lacks it

According to schema theory, reading comprehension is closely related to the readers’ priorknowledge and experience Afflerbach (1990) suggests that readers with more priorknowledge are more likely to construct the main idea automatically In other words, theprior knowledge of the content domain helps the readers anticipate the meaning of a text.According to schemata theory, certain cues in the text activate the reader’s schemata whichallow the reader to generate hypotheses about the content and structure of the text Thereader may draft and store a main idea statement about the unfamiliar text and then return

to the text for more information to revise the statement The readers without adequate

background knowledge find out that the task of main idea construction is more difficult.Therefore, the readers should activate background knowledge to compensate for thelimited resources of working memory.

All in all, it cannot be denied that background knowledge is the key to understanding of alanguage It is one of the most important factors contributing to the success of a reader Infact, comprehension will be very difficult or impossible if the readers have a lack ofknowledge about the topic of the reading passage because readers cannot decode orcomprehend what they are to read It is true to say that providing sufficient backgroundknowledge to students before getting them to read the text is very necessary Lack ofbackground knowledge can significantly impair comprehension, sufficient prior knowledgecan increase comprehension, and comprehension can be facilitated by using case-basedinstruction, that is, employing thematic organizers and hierarchical CM in reading(Alvarez, 1990) In UTT context, although students have finished the basic specialistsubjects related to ESP, in fact, they still have difficulty in expressing their prior specialistknowledge in English when studying ESP In this case, CM strategy seems to be the usefulframework for them to easily activate their prior knowledge

2.2.2.2 Motivation

According to Richards (1992), motivation is the factor that determines a person’s desire to

do something In second language, different types of motivation may affect learningdifferently Harmer (2001) says that the motivation that students bring to class is thebiggest single factor affecting their success Causes for incomprehension are that poormotivation leads to a lack of experience or inadequate prior knowledge and a limited orsubjective view of what is read Students are lowly motivated in reading when they areunable to use the language in meaningful situations Novak (1998) contends that CMsadequately fulfill the fundamental requirements of meaningful learning; therefore, using

CM strategy as scaffolding may facilitate learning as well as increase students’ motivationfor reading

2.2.2.3 Learning strategies

From the cognitive view, reading comprehension, which is the construction of meaningfrom a printed or written message, is a conversation between the reader and the author, andthus the widely accepted models of fluent reading is an interactive one in which a variety

of processes interact with text features Learning strategies are important and should bepaid attention to a lot because they are one of the major applications of cognitive theory.Oxford (1990) claims that learning strategies are behaviors or actions which learners use tomake language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable

According to the concept of cognitive learning, meaningful learning takes place when astudent consciously chooses to learn in a meaningful way If a student chooses to learn byrote, information is processed in an arbitrary and less substantive manner (Novak &Gowin, 1984) As a result, information is less linked to the existing knowledge and theforgetting rate is rapid

Based on this notion, Novak & Gowin (1984) suggest that the facilitative effect of CM

strategy in their study was partly due to the use of the strategy of assisting and forcinglearners to adopt a meaningful learning set by integrating the new knowledge with theexisting knowledge framework, and partly because of CM strategy’s providing a review ofthe key vocabulary

In conclusion, a good reader is the one who knows how to apply appropriate readingstrategies while reading As Hosenfield (1977) identifies a good reader as the one who tries

to keep the meaning of the passage in mind, reads in chunks, ignores less important words,tries to guess the meanings of unknown words using contextual clues, and has a goodconcept of himself as a reader In this case, researchers have agreed that employing CMstrategy can make students acquire the strategies and the process used by good readers

2.2.2.4 Materials

According to White (1988), materials are considered to be one of the kernel elements in themodel of language teaching and learning Its objectives are to develop English languageskills, students’ understanding and help students become autonomous learners

Because of this, appropriate reading materials must effectively assist students indeveloping reading skills It is necessary for teachers to design or select suitable readingtexts and materials, especially, ESP materials with relevant exercises for students’proficiency As Blau (2000) implies that the high-interest topic and thematically linkedreading effectively build students’ background knowledge and vocabulary for laterreading

The use of authentic texts is now considered to be one way of maintaining and increasingstudents’ motivation for learning They give the learners the feeling that he or she islearning the ‘real’ language (Guariento & Morley, 2001) However, the use of authentictexts may not only prevent the learners from responding in meaningful ways but also leadthem to feel frustrated, confused, and more importantly demotivated Therefore, teachershave to simplify authentic texts like ESP materials without losing their authenticity so thatstudents can get accustomed to authentic texts and easily understand them and it is saidthat applying CM strategy in ESP classes may help to do so because it helps studentsextract the information they need from the difficult authentic texts and providesmeaningful learning

In summary, factors mentioned above have been confirmed to have influence on learners’reading comprehension in prior research It is likely that these factors will affect thereading comprehension of two groups of students: the Experiment and Control group in thecurrent study

2.3 Concept mapping

The aim of this section is to provide readers with theoretical knowledge related to CMstrategy, including definitions of CM and CMs, benefits that CM brings about to readingcomprehension, steps in constructing a concept map, types of CM technique versions used

in previous research, the CM techniques used in this study and the reasons for this choice.The last part of this section presents some related previous studies

2.3.1 Definition of concept maps and concept mapping

Many researchers have tried to give out the definitions of CMs and CM According toNovak & Gowin (1984), CMs are diagrams which represent organized knowledge while

CM is described by Lanzing (1996) as a technique that can demonstrate how peoplevisualize relationships between various concepts Chularut & Debacker (2004, p.248)define CM as “a tool for representing interrelationships among concepts in an integrated,hierarchical manner.” In the latest introduction and instructions of the Novakian types ofCMs, Novak & Cañas (2008) define that CMs are graphical tools for organizing andrepresenting knowledge They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes ofsome type, and linking lines indicating the relationships between concepts A proposition,then, is defined as two concepts connected by a labeled link Propositions, or semanticunits, are meaningful statements about some objects or events The concepts are usuallyrank from the most general, most inclusive concept to the most specific, least generalconcept Meanwhile, concept mapping is a tool that visually displays the knowledgestructure of the given topics and the connections within this structure What makes thisdefinition more satisfying than those mentioned above is the general summary of thecharacteristics of CMs and CM, which helps readers get the whole picture of CMs and

CM Figure 1 shows an example of a concept map that describes the structure of CM andillustrates the above characteristics

Concept Maps

"Focus Question(s)"

Organized Knowledge Associated

Feelings or Affect

Effective Teaching

Context Dependent

Perceived

Regularities

Hierarchically Structured

Units

of Meaning Crosslinks

Effective Learning Social

help to answer represent

answer add to

is comprised of

connected using

used to form

necessary for is

with

aids especially with

between

e.g.

begins with

needed

to see

are

are

Figure 2.1 A concept map about Concept Maps by Novak & Cañas (2008, p2)

As can be seen above, these definitions about CMs and CM have something in common:CMs are diagrams that represent the relationships among concepts and CM is a tool thatvisually displays the knowledge structure of the given topics and the connections in thisstructure

A concept map and its terms’ meanings can be generalized as follows:

Figure 2.2 A Generalized concept map 2.3.2 Benefits of Concept mapping on reading comprehension

In a domain of reading comprehension, research has proved that CM brings about benefitsthat help minimize factors affecting L2 and FL reading comprehension due to theorganizing nature of CMs

A rewarding aspect of CM as Novak & Gowin (1984) state is that CM – an example ofvisual displays - can assist students in noticing, ordering, and remembering items from thetext because a concept map is a graphic representation that transits basic information inaddition to presenting hierarchical relationships and structures that may not be observableinitially to the readers Moreover, they state that thanks to its ability to visualize therelationships among concepts, CM allows the learners to analyze structure, group ideasinto categories, get the main ideas of a text easily so as to understand the reading material

In the same vain, Novak & Cañas (2008) agree that CM organizes ideas in a logicalmanner which helps develop critical and logical thinking They consider that CMs canfacilitate creative thinking thanks to the hierarchical structure that is represented in a goodmap and the ability to search for and characterize new cross-links By visually expressingclearly the association of various related concepts, CMs help the learners to find unseenconnection between ideas, organize information easily, and create new knowledge andunderstanding which in turn, clarify their thinking, enhance their understanding of theconceptual structure of selected topics

Another benefit of CM for reading comprehension is that CM makes students read textsdeeply because constructing CMs requires students to actively engage in organizing andanalyzing data, correlating appropriate information, and synthesizing ideas This activeinvolvement facilitates meaningful learning and therefore helps students better understandthe text (Shaul, 2011) These ideas are in agreement with those of Khajavi & Ketabi(2012) Besides, these two researchers add that CM also helps readers to organize,summarize their thoughts during reading and retrieve specific text details and difficultvocabulary; Moreover, it helps readers make predictions and hypotheses about the textcontent by linking the new information and their prior knowledge while reading andconstructing a map, which enhances students’ reading comprehension ability This is alsothe idea of Novak & Gowin (1984) Besides, these two researchers assert that drawingmaps while reading a text can help develop rich mental images from which greaterinference about the text can be done In other words, CM helps students improve theirinference ability and consequently enhance their reading comprehension

Furthermore, one of the various properties of CM is the extracting the main ideas orconcepts of a passage and enclosing them in squares or boxes help students conceptualizeand organize text ideas and information into a coherent whole The hierarchical nature ofCMs facilitates distinguishing major from minor ideas and essential from nonessential Byconnecting the squares together based on the relationships embedded in texts, students candeduce the ideas not explicitly stated in the text Therefore, with CM strategy, students can

be able to correctly delete unimportant or redundant messages in an article, which meansthat they might be able to grasp the main ideas of an article Labeling the arrows by linkingphrases or words enables the readers to understand and identify the rhetorical functionssuch as cause – effect, compare – contrast, arguments, etc, as well as deciding ondeductively and inductively valid argument What is more, the visual property of CM aidsthe learners to make the abstract more concrete and create holistic frame of the text thatwords alone cannot convey, which helps students to locate main ideas, distinguish betweensalient and subsidiary points or arguments, identify and conceptualize the text structure(Khodadady & Ghanizadeh, 2011)

Last but not least, from the results of the study by Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012), theyemphasize that CM is most favor of learners since they comprehend concepts quicklywhen they are presented within contexts and related to other concepts They also add that

CM, a graphical tool, is useful because in addition to paying attention to sequentialstructure of the text, its visual representation also allows readers to get a holisticunderstanding of the text and then recall the information easier and faster, and having ageneral picture of the text not only helps them to understand the text better but also makesthem to be more motivated and eager to read and their motivation may be indicated as onefactor of their success

As can be seen from one of the characteristics of CM mentioned in 2.3.1, students caneasily understand and retain the content of a learned text due to its equivalent concept mapwithout even attending the lesson because propositions in a concept map defined as twoconcepts connected by labeled links are meaningful statements, which shows thepreeminent advantage of CM over other visual displays

In conclusion, from the above mentioned benefits as well as characteristics of CM, theresearcher believes that CM can help improve the students’ ESP reading comprehensionability and help them have less text to read when they revise for the end of the semesterexamination as well at UTT

2.3.3 Steps in constructing a concept map.

The CM construction method defined by Novak & Gowin (1984) involves the followingsteps:

(1) Define the topic or focus question Concept maps that attempt to cover more thanone question may become difficult to manage and read

(2) Once the key topic has been defined, the next step is to identify and list the mostimportant or “general” concepts that are associated with the topic

(3) Next, those concepts are ordered top to bottom in the mapping field, going from themost general and inclusive to the most specific, an action that fosters the explicitrepresentation of assumption relationships (i.e., a hierarchical arrangement ormorphology)

(4) Once the key concepts have been identified and ordered, links are added to form

a preliminary Concept Map

(5) Linking phrases are added to describe the relationships among concepts

(6) Once the preliminary Concept Map has been built, the next step is to look for cross-links, which link together concepts that are in different areas or sub-domains

on the map Cross – links help to elaborate how concepts are interrelated

(7) Finally, the map is reviewed and any necessary changes to structure or content aremade

Although CM is regarded as an easy tool to capture, students can confuse and beembarrassed if the construction is not controlled well Therefore, teachers must emphasizethe linking words in order to helps learners recognize that they are what makes the wholething have meaning These words will create propositions or cross-links, which are themost difficult aspects of constructing (Safayeni et al., 2003) In addition, different coloredchalk, ink and shapes for nodes and links, which differentiate types of ideas orerelationships, are encouraged to use (Birbili, 2007) Furthermore, teachers must begin

planning by making clear themselves about the knowledge and the skills that they wanteach student and the whole class to grasp at the end of each lesson.

In a nutshell, it is apparent that these suggestions are important for successfully employing

CM in teaching and they require the teachers’ skillful and flexible manipulation and theconfidence in mastering the topic Once teachers keep in mind these guidelines and applythem in their teaching, CMs will show all their beauty

2.3.4 Types of concept mapping technique versions in previous research

Talking about the types of CM techniques, there are different versions of CM which havebeen suggested by earlier researchers who have asserted their effects on a learner’s readingcomprehension These techniques will be presented as follows:

Expert-constructed CM technique was employed by Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) With

this technique, a completely constructed concept map is used to present students with themacrostructure of a text in the form of graphic representation prepared by experts in thesubject domain The reader then has a guide to follow in a top to down approach to readingand finding focus points in the text

Scaffold-fading CM instruction proposed by Chang, Chen & Sung (2002), is a teaching

method that provides differing degrees of assistance for a learner according to his or herprogress Previous studies have found that scaffolding instruction enhances the students’learning ability and the degree of knowledge transfer The expert map is used at thebeginning as a kind of scaffold that helps readers learn the text As readers attain higherlevels of performance, the contents of the CMs provided by the experts will decline According to Chang, Chen & Sung (2002), with scaffolding-fading CM, the readingmaterials will be arranged into five stages:

(1) Read an expert concept map ( teacher-constructed- map)

(2) Fill in the blank of the expert concept map (with whole structure)

(3) Complete the partial expert CM (with partial structure)

(4) Construct the concept map using the given concepts and relation links

(5) Determine the key concepts and relation links from the text to construct theconcept map.

Learner-constructed CM (concept map generation) technique was applied by Shaul

(2011) and Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) With this technique, students are given atutorial on how to construct a concept map, then they are given a text, after reading thetext, they have to themselves find the concepts and relations links to self construct theirown map (which is like the last stage of the scaffold-fading CM technique by Chang, Chen

& Sung (2002)

Map-correction CM technique version was proposed and experimented by Chang, Sung &

Chen (2002) With this technique, students are given an expert-generated map that is partlyrevised to contain about 40 % of incorrect concepts and semantic links The readers have

to finish reading the text before they can correct the erroneous concepts and semantic links

Fill-in-map CM technique was employed by Vakilifard, Armand, & Baron (2006) and

Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) With this method, an incomplete framework of an expertmap with some blanks is provided as a scaffold for students Students have to fill in theblanks to complete the map according to the content of the given text they have finishedreading

2.3.5 Concept mapping techniques used in the current experiment and the reasons for this choice

Among the CM techniques mentioned above, the researcher tends to choose Fill-in-map and Map-correction CM techniques with scaffold as a compound independent variable in

this study because of the following reasons:

Firstly, as Chang, Sung & Chen (2002) proposed, the framework and partial informationprovided by map correction procedure seems to be more suitable way for conducting CMfor elementary students For them, in order to detect and correct the partially incorrectconcepts or links in the expert map, readers are not only forced to read the entire structure

of a given map to fully encode and understand the concepts and the connections betweenthem from the entire map but also have to think critically and analytically about what iswrong with the map

Secondly, when investigating the effects of three different CM techniques: map, Fill-in-map and Expert-map on promoting students’ learning processes in the field of business, Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) defines Fill-in-map CM as the most effective

Construct-a-CM

On the other hand, as these researchers find that the effect of scaffolding CM techniqueconducted with a gradual graphic adjunct removal is not superior to the technique withoutgradual removal because the operations performed after the scaffolding has been removedmay still be too difficult for elementary students

Next, for learner-constructed CM technique, although it is effective in promoting

autonomous learning and enhancing the depth of learning, the required training of students

is time consuming Moreover, the activity requires efforts and usually results in cognitiveoverload and negatively affects learning outcomes (Chang, Sung & Chen, 2002) and eventhe willingness to use it Therefore, in a short time (only 10 weeks), this technique cannot

be applied in the current study

Moreover, with expert-constructed CM, although this approach can save time and can

serve as a preview structure for outlining the text, it makes students only passively take inknowledge from experts with little autonomous learning on their part, which alsonegatively affects their learning results

Therefore, to fill in the gap among these above mentioned techniques, the researcher has

chosen both Fill-in-map and Map-correction CM approaches as the compound

independent variable in this experiment in order to avoid boredom and monotonousnessand because they are suitable in the researcher’s context Furthermore, with thesemethods, teachers can have students read a teacher map and have them generate a mapbecause the valid structure of the teacher map may serve as the framework for text contentand map construction, thereby facilitating text reading comprehension and reduce theworkload of constructing a concept map However, in this study, the researcher adapted

Map-correction CM technique by Chang, Sung & Chen (2002) by giving CMs with

gradual increase in the number of incorrect concepts / linking words from 20% to the

possible maximum according to the students’ progress and Fill-in-map CM technique by

Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) with gradual removal of concepts / linking words from

20% to the possible maximum according to the students’ progress The detailed procedure

of these two techniques was stated in 3.2.1 It is hopeful that the combination of a spatial

strategy with the Map-correction and Fill-in-map CM techniques may be a potential

approach for the effects of CM on ESP reading comprehension proficiency

2.4 Previous research related to the effects of Concept mapping on reading comprehension ability

CM strategy has been widely applied and proved to positively affect text comprehensionand students’ interest in reading L1 materials in ‘hard’ science for a long time but untilrecently, educators have begun to report the effectiveness of CM strategy in L2 and EFLsettings and for a variety of purposes

Vakilifard, Armand, & Baron (2006) conducted an evaluative pilot study to investigate theeffects of CM (scaffold fading technique) on informative text comprehension in French as

a second language In this study, eighteen adult French L2 learners with various mothertongues and of an advanced level from the language school of the ‘ Univesite du Qúebec àMontreal’ were selected as subjects to a weekly intervention over a four week period andwere assigned into an experimental group (N=9) and a control group (N=9) Theinformative texts taught to the two groups were identical and the contents of theinformative texts took varied forms The control group followed the traditional approach(explanation of new words and expressions, discussions of the key concepts) while thetreatment group employed CM strategy That is, before reading an informative text, thestudents in the treatment group were invited to collaboratively replace the labels in a Fill inConcept Map Then after reading the text, they were asked to correct it individually Overthe course of four weeks, the researchers used an instructional strategy of the progressivedevolution concept map, which is an approach to scaffold fading The results obtained withthe comprehension questionnaires on the reading text specific to each meeting indicatedthat the experimental group obtained a better performance than the control group Also, theresults of the auto-evaluation questionnaire revealed that almost all the members of theexperimental group reported that the use of the concept map led them to betterunderstanding the text by presenting the organization and structure of the texts, and byidentifying the principal ideas presented in the texts

In 2011, Shaul investigated the effect of student-generated-CM on the performance in textreading comprehension of 14 EFL-12th grade students at both advanced and elementarylevel at a high school in Israel over a three week period They were assigned into anexperimental group and a control group In the experimental group, the participants weredivided into two groups according to their level: low knowledge group and high

knowledge group and student-generated-CM was used in these groups in three lessons The control group, which did not partake in student-generated-CM, was also divided into

low and high knowledge learners First, students in the experimental group were given atutorial on how to create a visual aid, more specifically CMs during reading Then studentstook part in three lessons, thereby they employed CM strategy After each lesson, thestudents completed a reading comprehension test based on the text that they had read.Besides, following each test, they were interviewed in order to assess their dispositiontoward self-generated-CM The results showed that self-generated-CM by low knowledgestudents had a significantly greater influence on text comprehension than self-generated-

CM by high knowledge students or both control groups but the students’ dispositiontoward self-generated-CM had a progressive positive change, regardless of students’ level.Therefore, in this study, the researcher states that CM strategy is more appropriate for lowproficiency level students than the high

In another research, Khajavi & Ketabi (2012) conducted a study to investigate the impacts

of CM on reading comprehension and self-efficacy of intermediate EFL students in Iran Inthis study, there were 60 participants consisting of 21 males and 39 females, aged from 19

to 23 They were randomly assigned into a CM group and a traditional method group Thedata collection instruments included pre-tests and post-tests in reading comprehension andself-efficacy The strategy instruction for the experimental group followed five steps: 1)Strategy description, 2) Discussion of goals and purposes, 3) Modeling of the strategy, 4)Student mastery of the strategy, 5) Guided practice and Feedback After the trainingsessions, students had to draw their own CMs while reading the given passages, and thenreceived feedback from the instructor, one of the researchers The results of the studyclearly showed positive effects of CM strategy instruction on Iranian EFL students’reading comprehension and self-efficacy at the intermediate level of language proficiency.Therefore, these researchers propose that students can use this strategy to learn newvocabulary, summarize the texts and understand main ideas and central information in the

texts because CM is a student-centered strategy which is easily applicable by students and

a good tool for improving students’ reading comprehension

In the same year, in the study “The effect of Learner - constructed, Fill-in-map CM

techniques, and summarizing strategy on Iranian pre-university students’ readingcomprehension” Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) further examines the impact of CMstrategy, specifically, these techniques on reading comprehension abilities of Iranian EFLstudents To this purpose, a standardized proficiency test was employed to select andassign students Accordingly, 90 intermediate pre-university female students were selectedand assigned into three groups, each including 30 students: Learner-constructed group,Fill-in-map CM group, and Summarizing strategy group to ensure their homogeneity Thepre-reading comprehension test and post-reading comprehension test were respectivelyadministered to measure the comprehension abilities of the subjects at the beginning of thestudy and to compare the effect of the treatment on the reading comprehension skills afterfive session treatment period During the five-session treatment period, the assignedstrategies were taught and practiced in each group The results of the study showed that theFill-in-map CM was the most influencing one despite the efficacy of all the threestrategies It is suggested that in general, CM techniques might be regarded as analternative or even as an effective replacement of the summarizing strategy for readingcomprehension skill

In summary, the studies presented above have shown some evidence to prove the greatimpacts of CM strategy on learners’ reading comprehension proficiency Nevertheless,there are some limitations in these previous studies First of all, the research conducted byShaul (2011), Vakilifard, Armand & Baron (2006), and Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012)lasted in only 3 or 4 weeks, or even in a 5 session period, which is a short time It isdoubtful whether there can be any improvement in students’ reading comprehension withdifficulty in reading in such a short time Therefore, the current research needs to beconducted in a longer period of treatment Second, most of the previous studies wereconducted with the participation of intermediate pre-university EFL and secondary schoolstudents The research by Vakilifard, Armand & Baron (2006) focuses on L2 participantswhereas the participants in the study by Soleimani & Nabizadeh (2012) were female only,all of which may lead to the difference in the research results Thus, this study concentrates

on non-English major high elementary university students who are different from university and secondary school students in terms of age, English level and with theparticipation of both genders The researcher wants to know if CM strategy is appropriatefor this kind of subjects Furthermore, although there is ample research pertaining to theuse of CM in many classrooms (Novak & Gowin, 1984; Chang, Sung & Chen, 2002), there

pre-is, to my best knowledge when searching for related materials, no research on the influence

of CM on ESP reading comprehension so far in Vietnam, even in the world Moreover,from what have been discussed previously, the researcher finds that CM can be suitable inher teaching context in such a way that CM is appropriate for improving readingcomprehension of informative texts of low knowledge students (Shaul, 2011) and thereforethe researcher believes that CM can solve the problem in the researcher’s context, whichstimulates her to conduct a study on the effects of CM strategy on ESP readingcomprehension of informative texts With such an attempt to address the gaps in theliterature, it is hoped that the current study will make its results more reliable and moreconsistent so as to add further evidence to the field of learning and teaching of readingcomprehension of English in general and ESP in particular

2.5 Summary

Chapter 2 has reviewed the theoretical background of reading, reading comprehension and

CM In terms of reading, beside its definition and the three stages of a reading lesson, theresearcher has stated ESP reading and the difference between ESP reading and GE readingand some principles of effective reading instruction as well For reading comprehension,together with the definition, some specific factors affecting reading comprehension such asbackground knowledge, motivation, learning strategies, and materials have been discussed

As for CM, along with its definition, the chapter has also presented its benefits, steps inconstructing a concept map, some types of CM techniques in previous research, the CMtechniques and the reasons for their use in the current study Last but not least, besidessummarizing previous studies in the field of CM’s effects on reading comprehension, theresearcher has also pointed out the gaps in the previous research and planned somesolutions for the current study to fill in these gaps so as to make its findings more reliable.All of these serve as a basis for an investigation into the effects of CM strategy on non-English major students’ ESP reading comprehension