Effects of concept maps on reading comprehension of grade ten students at tri duc high school a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts

The students of the experimental group were asked to do a questionnaire to investigate their attitudes towards the use of concept maps on reading comprehension.. Most of the students of

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

-

EFFECTS OF CONCEPT MAPS

ON READING COMPREHENSION

OF GRADE-TEN STUDENTS AT TRI DUC HIGH SCHOOL

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by

LE THUY VY

Supervisor

Dr NGUYEN THUY NGA

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2016

No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thesis would not be done without any assistance and contributions of many people Thus, this is an opportunity for me to express my gratitude to all of them

First and foremost, I would like to give my deep gratitude to my supervisor –

Dr Nguyen Thuy Nga, who always helped and spent her limited time reading and giving advice for my thesis as well as showed me how to do the thesis better

Secondly, I would like to give my thanks to Ho Chi Minh City Open University for giving me chance to finish my study to get a Master degree in many different ways

Thirdly, to my colleagues in Tri Duc High School, who gave me permission and chance to complete my thesis within the school year 2015-2016, I appreciated their contributions and encouragement during the time I did the research

I am also grateful to some of my friends of TESOL 8 They spared their time to help me and share their experience in doing the thesis

Finally, I would like to send my deep love to my family They always encouraged me to do well and to keep moving forwards to complete what I had started It was they who were with me through difficulties and supported me when I needed help so that I had enough energy to complete my thesis

ABSTRACT

English nowadays is considered as an international language that is widely used around the world English language skills have become a topic for studied by many researchers, including reading comprehension Besides, concept maps are also believed to help improve students’ reading comprehension A study was conducted with two classes of 10 graders in Tri Duc High School in Ho Chi Minh City to measure the effects of concept maps on students’ reading comprehension in a private high school setting The two classes were named control group and experimental group They learnt reading with the same approach – Communicative Language Teaching- but with one difference that is the intervention, i.e concept maps in the experimental group Before that, the students of the two groups took a pretest on reading comprehension and an independent t-test was used to analyze the results to ensure the same level of reading comprehension performance of the two groups After inconsecutive 5 periods of reading lessons, they took a reading comprehension posttest The students of the experimental group were asked to do a questionnaire to investigate their attitudes towards the use of concept maps on reading comprehension The data were collected, coded by computer software and analyzed The results revealed a statistically significant difference in the posttest scores of the two groups after the treatment Besides, the students of the experimental group appeared to have better posttest scores than those of the control group Most of the students of the experimental group also showed their agreement in the use of concept maps in reading lesson Therefore, concept maps had positive effects on Tri Duc grade-ten students’ reading comprehension and most of them showed positive attitudes towards this new strategy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

ABBREVIATIONS x

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Problem statement 3

1.3 Research aims 4

1.4 Research questions 5

1.5 Research significance 5

1.6 Overview of thesis chapters 5

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Theoretical Background to the Research 7

2.1.1 Reading comprehension 7

2.1.2 Concept maps 12

2.1.3 Benefits of concept maps to reading comprehension 20

2.1.4 Applications of concept maps in reading lessons 22

2.2 Summaries of previous studies on effects of concept maps on reading comprehension 24

2.3 Implications for the present study 31

2.4 Chapter summary 33

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 34

3.1 Research setting 34

3.2 Participants 35

3.3 Research design 36

3.4 Material and teaching procedures 37

3.4.1 Material 37

3.4.2 Teaching procedures 38

3.5 Measurement instruments 42

3.5.1 Pretest and posttest 42

3.5.2 Questionnaires 43

3.6 Procedures of data collection 48

3.7 Data analysis 49

3.7.1 Research question 1: To what extent do concept maps have effects on students’ reading comprehension? 49

3.7.2 Research question 2: What are students’ attitudes towards using concept maps in learning reading? 50

3.8 Chapter summary 50

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 52

4.1 Information of the participants 52

4.2 Research question 1: To what extent do concept maps have effects on students’ reading comprehension? 54

4.2.1 Before the treatment 54

4.2.2 After the treatment 56

4.3 Research question 2: What are students’ attitudes towards using concept maps in learning reading? 60

4.3.1 Section A: attitudes towards the use of concept maps 60

4.3.2 Section B: attitudes towards the effects of concept maps on reading comprehension 61

4.3.3 Section C: the future use of concept maps in students’ learning 65

4.4 Discussion of the findings 67

4.4.1 Summary of the findings 67

4.4.2 Discussion 67

4.5 Chapter summary 72

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 73

5.1 Conclusion 73

5.2 Contributions and limitations 74

5.2.1 Contributions 74

5.2.2 Limitations 75

5.3 Recommendations 76

5.4 Suggestions for further studies 78

5.5 Chapter summary 79

REFERENCES 80

APPENDIX 1 A 89

APPENDIX 1 B 95

APPENDIX 2 A 99

APPENDIX 2 B 105

APPENDIX 3 A 110

APPENDIX 3 B 117

APPENDIX 4 A 122

APPENDIX 4 B 128

APPENDIX 5 A 133

APPENDIX 5 B 138

APPENDIX 6 142

APPENDIX 7 146

APPENDIX 8 151

APPENDIX 9 154

APPENDIX 10 157

APPENDIX 11 158

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2 1 An example of concept maps (Novak & Cañas, 2008) 12Figure 2 2 An example of typical mind map (Duffill, 2013) 13Figure 2 3 An example of Spider map (Assessment and Instructional Alignment, 2007) 15Figure 2 4 An example of Hierarchical map (Kinchin, 1998) 15Figure 2 5 An example of Flowchart map (Create a Basic Flowchart, 2016) 16Figure 2 6 System map of a health center appointments system (A System map, 2007) 17Figure 2 7 Relationships between concept maps and reading comprehension 32

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2 1 The advantages and disadvantages of four kinds of concept maps 18

Table 2 2 Summary of previous studies on reading comprehension and concept maps 30

Table 3 1 Selected reading texts 37

Table 3 2 Summary of teaching procedures 38

Table 3 3 Summary of teaching stages 40

Table 3 4 Summary of selected reading texts for pre and posttest 43

Table 4 1 Summary of demographic information of the participants 53

Table 4 2 Group Statistics on reading comprehension pretest scores of the control group and the experimental group 54

Table 4 3 Results of Independent sample t-test on reading comprehension pretest scores of the control group and the experimental group 55

Table 4 4 Pair sample statistics on the pretest and posttest scores of the control group 56

Table 4 5 The pair sample t-test results on the pretest and posttest scores of the control group 57

Table 4 6 Pair sample statistics on the pretest and posttest scores of the experimental group 57

Table 4 7 The pair sample t-test results on the pretest and posttest scores of the experimental group 58

Table 4 8 Group Statistics on reading comprehension posttest scores of the control group and the experimental group 58

Table 4 9 Results of Independent sample t-test on reading comprehension posttest scores of the control group and the experimental group 59

Table 4 10 Presentation of students’ views on the use of concept maps 61

Table 4 11 Presentation of students’ attitudes toward learning reading with concept maps 62

Table 4 12 Presentation of students’ attitudes towards using concept maps in pre-reading stage 63

Table 4 13 Presentation of students’ attitudes towards using concept maps in reading stage 64Table 4 14 Presentation of students’ attitudes toward using concept maps in post-reading stage 65Table 4 15 Presentation of students’ attitudes towards the future use of concept maps

while-in their learnwhile-ing 66

ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as a Foreign Language

GCSE General Certificate of Secondary Education

MOET Ministry of Education and Training

NAEP National Assessment of Educational Progress PET Preliminary English Test

QRCS Quiz of Reading Comprehension Skill

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides the background to the current study It also raises the problems of language learning in general and in Vietnamese setting in particular, which is the reason for this study to be conducted Thereafter, the research aims, research questions and the significance of the study for both teachers and students are going to be presented An organization of the thesis is placed at the end of this chapter

1.1 Background to the study

With the advent of globalization, English is considered as a global language due to its “simple and wide use” (Nehemia, 2009) It is used to communicate for purposes of friendship, transaction, trade, etc and dominates many fields from media

to business Thus, English, which is widely used all over the world not only by native speakers but also by others from different continents, is considered as an effective language aiding meaningful communication (Sharma, 2012) More and more teachers have been trained to teach English effectively to learners so that they can reach a high level of language proficiency Therefore, English and its four basic skills, namely, reading, speaking, listening and writing, have been topics for studies for decades Among the topics that have been studied, effective strategy for learning reading is an interesting topic for researchers Reading is also essential for language learning process because it aids in building background knowledge through the information intake while reading

Reading is one of the four skills, which is paid much attention to when it comes

to learning a language in general and learning English in particular Over many years, the notion of reading has been changing a lot based on particular views and approaches According to Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (2006), the view of reading has changed over the past few decades First, in the environmentalist approach, readers

just pay attention to the observable facts, i.e they decode the symbols and translate

them with the strict prevention of errors Second, in innatist approach, reading is considered as an active process in which readers derive the meaning of the reading text by connecting it with their own prior knowledge Third, the interactionist

approach allows readers to contrast what they read with their culture, which can be called interactive process of reading In this view, “different interpretations should be accepted and welcomed in the classroom” (Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2006, p.267) The last approach that should be highlighted is communicative competence framework This approach evolving over the past twenty years views reading as “an important role in facilitating the acquisition of communicative competence” (Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2006, p.267), which consists of discourse, linguistic, pragmatic and strategic competence Thus, reading is important for learners to acquire the language and the needs for effective reading learning strategies should be considered

Concept maps have been studied in relation with different purposes of learning

to find out their effects on particular areas of learning According to Novak and Cañas (2006), concept maps were dated back to the 1960s when Ausubel came up with an idea of finding an effective way of presenting ideas in an easy way to learn Then, Novak expanded Ausubel’s idea and theory of meaningful learning and he concluded that "meaningful learning involves the assimilation of new concepts and propositions

into existing cognitive structures" (Novak, 1993) Novak developed concept mapping

in 1972 with central node and linking words to form a proposition in a concept map (Novak and Cañas, 2006) After that, he and his partners conducted many studies to get deep understanding of using concept maps in different aspects of learning and developed concept mapping tool used in teaching As follows, some other studies have been conducted to testify the effectiveness of concept maps on improving English reading comprehension such as Anderson and Huang (1989); Vakilifard & Armand (2006); Ghanizadeh (2007); Liu and Chen (2008); Oliver (2009); Dias (2010); Liu, Chen and Chang (2010); Kalhor & Shakibaei (2012); Sahin (2013) and Yousofi and Seidi (2015) Besides, there are some studies in Vietnam on concept maps on learning science presented such as Bui (2010); Pham (2012); Nguyen and Doan (2015); on learning English such as Nguyen (2011) and on reading comprehension such as Le (2007)

In other words, concept maps have been proved to be useful for learning reading a foreign language text Due to the lack of research on the effects of concept

maps on reading comprehension in Vietnam, especially on high school students’ reading comprehension, there is a need to conduct a study to examine whether the use

of concept maps in teaching and learning reading have positive effect on their reading comprehension or not

1.2 Problem statement

So far, reading comprehension has been assessed with a traditional view, so have the strategies for reading Reading comprehension was assessed with general indicator of how well students understand the text (Klingner, Vaughn & Boardman, 2007) Reading comprehension is more than just understanding the text It should be understood with the prior knowledge or experience of readers, i.e readers can connect the information given in the text with what they have known or experienced in their real life (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995) However, according to Klingner et al (2007), students are asked to read a text and do some tasks on reading comprehension such as multiple choice, short answer or cloze text By doing this, students have no chance to use their prior knowledge to connect with what they have read Therefore, reading should be assessed as an interactive and reflective process (Klingner et al., 2007) In other words, there must be another way of assessing reading comprehension and some other strategies to make reading comprehension possible for students

In Vietnam, English language is a compulsory subject in high schools and is taken in the National Examination following the regulation which was issued by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in 2015 However, many Vietnamese students cannot communicate in English after ten years’ of learning the language (Nguyen, 2014) The MOET has taken action to upgrade the ability of learners and teachers of English, though In the interview, Nguyen also said that in 2014 when English was an optional subject in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination taken by all senior students in high school every year, there were only 16% of students choosing English to be one of the subjects they had to take in the exam In other words, English to Vietnamese students is such a difficult subject that they are reluctant to choose it Additionally, Le (2013) also indicated that the widely accepted method is still traditional one with which students have to learn grammar-based lessons, not the skills Ho stated in his research in 2014 that one of the problems

in reading comprehension was that students lack of vocabulary though teachers often provide students with a heavy load of vocabulary Therefore, there must be a need for appropriate strategy to enhance students’ reading comprehension

The similar problems happen to the students at Tri Duc High School in which the study was conducted It is a private school in Ho Chi Minh City, which has nearly two hundred tenth graders, most of whom come from provinces They come to the city and spend most of their time at school with teachers and other students In school, they are taught with the English textbooks required by the MOET and tested by doing some exams These exams mainly check students’ knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, but not the skills From personal experience of 4-year teaching in Tri Duc High School, the writer finds out that students are often taught just in order to be well-prepared for the exams but not teaching strategies for reading comprehension Most of the students viewed reading as the most difficult skill to learn among other three skills Moreover, talking with other teachers of English in Tri Duc High School, the writer also finds out that in a reading lesson, the teacher and writer and other teachers

of English in this school show new vocabulary by using pictures or examples for some words and then ask students to copy down a long list of vocabulary In while-reading, teachers ask students to read and translate the text into Vietnamese so that all students can understand the text Students are also asked to do tasks provided in textbooks in groups or pairs The language used in class is often English first and then translated into Vietnamese Most of the teachers also say that most students are reluctant to learn reading which might be due to the way of teaching This should be changed so that students can have reading skills, not just to read textbooks, but to read other kinds of documents such as newspapers, magazines, signs, etc which are in their real life Therefore, an alternative strategy should be applied in order to motivate students in learning reading

1.3 Research aims

The purposes of this study were firstly, to investigate whether concept maps have positive effects on students’ reading comprehension and secondly, to explore what students think about the use of concept maps in learning reading

On the one hand, concept maps can help students become more effective

readers who are are able to read the texts in their field This helps students, especially students in Tri Duc High School, be able to read English texts not only in textbooks but also in other documents for purpose of study or pleasure Moreover, teachers can use concept maps in teaching students vocabulary and help them enhance their collaboration with their peers

On the other hand, this present study will hopefully inspire teachers to use concept maps in reading instruction so that their students are highly motivated in learning reading

In other words, both teachers and learners could learn from this study and use concept map in collaboration with other strategies to make reading more successful Other succeeding studies should try to connect concept maps and collaborative learning in improving students’ reading comprehension

1.6 Overview of thesis chapters

The current study comprises of five parts as follows

Chapter 1 is the introduction of the study It presents the background of this study It

also reveals the problem statement followed by two research aims and two research questions and the significance of the study

Chapter 2 is the review of literature in which the theoretical knowledge of the independent and dependent variables is reviewed It includes overview of reading comprehension and concept maps and the relationships between them Then, some previous studies are also presented in order to find the research gap for the current study

Chapter 3 shows the methodology of the study Research setting, participants, instruments, procedures of the study and data analysis are revealed in this chapter Chapter 4 analyzes the data collected from pretest, posttest scores and a questionnaire

on students’ attitudes after the experiment followed by the discussion of the findings drawn from the data analyzed

Chapter 5 summarizes the main findings of the study It also mentions the contributions and limitations of this study; then it provides some recommendations and suggestions for further studies

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the theoretical background of the study is reviewed including reading comprehension, concept maps and the relationships between them Following the theoretical background is the review of previous studies of effects of concept maps

on reading comprehension The last part of this chapter, the research gap is presented

in order to lead to the current research

2.1 Theoretical Background to the Research

2.1.1 Reading comprehension

2.1.1.1 Overview of reading comprehension

There have been a number of definitions of reading comprehension so far Firstly, reading comprehension does not merely mean understanding the text, but it comprises of word reading and language comprehension (Gough &Tunmer, 1986) Word reading relates to the ability to decode the words out of context while language comprehension relates to the ability to understand words or sentences as a whole in context of the text The two components of reading comprehension supplement each other That is to say students cannot understand the text if they are not adequately provided with vocabulary On the other hand, the fact that students with the ability of reading words out of context does not mean that they can make sense of those words

in context of a particular text

Secondly, reading comprehension, according to Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985; Jenkins, Larson and Fleischer, 1983, and O’Shea, Sindelar, & O’Shea, 1987 is “the process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex processes that include word reading, word and world knowledge, and fluency” (as cited in Klingner et al., 2007) Word and world knowledge are the abilities to connect what is read with what students have in their real life from their knowledge and experience Fluency is the ability to read and understand a text in a limit of time In other words, reading comprehension also relates to the process of many different cognitive skills and ability (Oakhill, Cain and Elbro, 2005)

Thirdly, according to McNamara (2007), reading comprehension refers to “the ability to go beyond the words, to understand the ideas and the relationships between ideas conveyed in a text” This definition conveys the same meaning as Gough and

Tunmer (1986) used to define that reading comprehension is not simply to understand the text but comprehend the meaning and the relationships which are implied in the text based on the context

Moreover, Pardo (2004) defined reading comprehension as the process in which readers make an attempt to connect what is in the text with prior knowledge, previous experience and their view related to the text

To conclude, reading comprehension is a challenging and complex process including decoding the words and comprehending the meaning, the ideas and relationships among ideas in the text in relation with prior knowledge, world knowledge and previous experience of the readers

2.1.1.2 Levels of reading comprehension

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), provided by Hibbard and Wagner (2003), there are four levels of reading

comprehension: Initial understanding, Developing an interpretation, Making connection and Critical Stance In the first level, initial understanding, students are

asked to retell the factual information they read through some activities such as name, list, or describe, etc The second level, developing an interpretation, wants students to,

as its name says, process the information they have in the first level In other words, students try to develop an interpretation of the text Some activities for this level are to predict, infer, analyze and explain The third level is different from the second one in a way that it needs more than one source of information While the second requires students to process one source of information in the text, the third asks them to connect this source of information with others in their own life or in other texts At this level, students can do some activities such as compare and contrast The fourth level of reading comprehension asks students to make a critique and evaluate the author’s work or they can be asked to find out the emotion of the author mentioning in the text Thus, students can evaluate, judge or rate at this level of reading comprehension In brief, when choosing what to teach in reading comprehension, teachers should always bear in mind at which level they want their students to read the text so that they can design suitable activities for reading comprehension

2.1.1.3 Assessing reading comprehension

It is rather difficult to assess students’ reading comprehension According to Harris and Graham (2005), it is because determining how much students really know and what they are actually thinking is quite hard As mentioned in section 1.2, traditional measures of reading comprehension had some limits, e.g students cannot connect what they have read to what they have already known Therefore, in these days, in order to assess students’ reading comprehension, teachers had better consider many factors before choosing a test or an assessment measure They can be the purpose of the testing, the information needed to test students, the number and the level of students tested, the length of the test and the form-whether it is tested individually or in groups (Harris and Graham, 2005) Finding the purpose of reading comprehension assessment is essential Levels of students, kinds of tests, etc are some elements that assessment should be based on to make sure that students are assessed in the right way and suitably for their ability Therefore, teachers should be careful when choosing the way to assess students’ reading comprehension

2.1.1.4 Strategies for reading comprehension

Reading comprehension strategies is defined as “a process of reasoning” (Pang, Muaka, Bernhardt and Kamil, 2003) It is also, as in Graesser’s definition, “a cognitive and behavioral action that is enacted under particular contextual conditions, with the goal of improving some aspect of comprehension” (2007) To make it clear, Graesser gives an example of a student’s need of searching a vocabulary when he confronts it in the text With behavioral action, he looks that word up in the dictionary while the cognitive action lets students read the definition in the dictionary and then reread the sentence in the text to have understanding of the sentence as a whole Furthermore, according to Adler (2004), comprehension strategies are steps that help readers comprehend the text He also recommended 7 strategies which happen to have

“a firm scientific basis for improving text comprehension” in his article With strategies, students can improve their reading comprehension as Moore (2010) mentioned that “Low-achieving adolescent readers improve their comprehension performance when they learn to apply strategies.” Besides, Brown, Pressley, Van Meter and Schuder (1996) concluded that students with reading strategies outperform

those without Thus, it is imperative that students have strategies for reading comprehension

In comparison among some articles about comprehension strategies, i.e Adler, 2004; Meltzer, Smith, and Clark, 2001; Moore, 2010; Pang et al., 2003; Tankersley,

2005, the writer came up with a list of some most common reading comprehension strategies

(i) Monitoring strategy is a metacognitive strategy referring to the

“thinking about thinking”, i.e readers are aware and can control their understanding In other words, with this strategy, readers make a plan and purpose for their reading Therefore, they can know what they do and do not understand in the reading text and know how to fix the problems when they arise

(ii) Questions and answers strategy provides readers opportunities to focus

on what to read based on the questions Readers can also review the content and relate what they have learnt and what they have already known, which aids deeper understanding of the reading text

(iii) Making connection strategy allows readers to connect what is in the text

with their own real life experience, with other texts or with what is happening in the world

(iv) Summarizing strategy requires readers know what is important or what

the main ideas are in the reading text to put into their own words This strategy helps readers identify the central ideas, get rid of irrelevant information and remember what has been read

(v) Visualizing strategy makes use of visual images to illustrate concepts

and relationships among concepts in the text This assists readers in focusing text structures and providing tools to examine and show relationships in a text

In general, there are many strategies for reading comprehension, some of which have just been presented above However, the focus of this current study is on concept maps, one type of visualizing strategy Therefore, an overview of the use of concept

maps strategy in reading comprehension lesson will be discussed in the following paragraphs

Concept maps can be used as a strategy in pre, while and post stage of a reading lesson Pre-reading stage aims to help students build background knowledge, present new vocabulary, generate students’ interest of the topic (Meltzer et al., 2001) The teacher can ask students to build a concept map on what they know about the topic Then, ask students to compare their maps with their peers’ This is to help “set the stage for the new learning and motivate students” (Meltzer et al., 2001) While-reading stage allows students to integrate what is read in the text with readers’ prior knowledge (Crilly, 2002) At this stage, students are given a chance to reconfirm what they have brainstormed about the topic in the pre-reading stage so that they can add some new information in the text and eliminate what is irrelevant The post-reading stage is the stage in which students’ reading comprehension is checked and then they are led to a deeper analysis of the text (Barnett, 1988) At this stage, students can compare the before- and after-reading maps to see how much they have learnt Besides, students are asked to bring out the message that the author implies in the text

or just simply make a summary of what has been read so far In short, concept maps can be used throughout a reading lesson to facilitate comprehension

It has been studied and concluded that concept map which is one of graphic organizers is considered as a reading strategy (Manoli & Papadopoulou, 2012) Concept maps are also regarded as a tool for representing knowledge and showing the relationships among concepts Studies have been done to investigate their effects on learning Most of them stated that concept maps have positive effects on meaningful learning, especially on reading comprehension as they help relate what students have read to what they have already known and students also showed their positive attitudes towards using this kind of maps in learning Nonetheless, some other studies’ results showed no significant difference in posttest scores of the students when learning with concept maps such as Chen (1998) and students showed their disagreement on using concept maps at school such as Anderson and Huang (1989) Some of the studies on this topic will be discussed in later section, 2.2

2.1.2 Concept maps

2.1.2.1 Definition and characteristics of concept maps

Concept map is one type of graphic organizers which use lines, boxes, and circles to present the information, knowledge, concepts or facts as well as the relationships between those which are depicted in the graph In concept maps, the concepts are enclosed in boxes or circles (called nodes) which are connected by lines

on which words or phrases showing the relationships among concepts Figure 2.1 below show the structures of a concept map and its characteristics (Novak & Cañas, 2008)

As the figure 2.1 shown, a concept map consists of concepts and propositions Two or more concepts which are labeled with symbols and words are linked to form propositions in order to display meaningful statements about objects or events

happening in the world There are two important characteristics of concept maps: hierarchical structure and crosslink Firstly, the two elements of concept maps are

hierarchically structured, i.e presenting meaning from general to specific or from the

most to the least important This kind of structure must base on the context in order to

find out the answers for a particular question called focus question Another characteristic of concept maps is the crosslink (Novak & Cañas, 2008) Crosslink is

Figure 2 1 An example of concept maps (Novak & Cañas, 2008)

used to show the relationship between two concepts, which can help us to see how one concept is related to another on interpreting concept maps

Another term has been used when it comes to concept maps is the term concept mapping It is used to be defined as a process by which students illustrate their

understanding of a particular area of knowledge in a visual way with shapes and lines indicating the concepts and the interrelationship among them (Lay-Dopyera & Bayerbach, 1983) It is also defined as a technique that allows both the person who creates concept map and those who read the concept map understand the relationships among the ideas or core concepts presented visually through concept maps (Scappaticci, 2000) In other words, concept mapping is a technique or process that students build their concept maps to show their understanding of a particular area Following is the comparison between concept maps and another type of map, i.e mind maps

2.1.2.2 Comparison between concept maps and mind maps

People tend to confuse mind maps and concept maps and use them interchangeably; however, experts consider these as two distinct types of maps (Beavers, 2014) Mind map was created by Tony Buzan in 1993 According to Buzan (2007), mind map is “a thinking tool that reflects externally what goes on inside your head” An example of a mind map is shown below

These two types of maps share the same characteristics, which are organizing and presenting ideas in a graphical way They also help make learning process more interesting and easy to memorize things They somehow have some distinct characteristics Firstly, about their forms, a mind map begins in the middle and then

Figure 2 2 An example of typical mind map (Duffill, 2013)

branches are connected to the center node while a concept map often starts with the most general concept on the top of the map Next, in a mind map, curves instead of straight lines or arrows as in a concept map are used to draw branches and on each branch there is only one word compared to a phrase or even a clause in each box Yet, nowadays people tend to write more than one word per branch of mind maps in order

to make it clearer (Duffill, 2013) Moreover, colors and images are also used to draw mind map whereas in concept maps, people use boxes to draw maps, often without any colors and images According to Davies (2010), mind maps are of associational design in comparison with hierarchical design of concept maps This means the former focuses on the association of ideas while the latter focuses on the relationship among concepts As for the use of maps, mind maps are used for note-taking and reviewing while people often use concept maps for classroom teaching, self-study and revision (Eppler, 2006) The preceding ideas are the same as Duffill’s when he claimed that concept maps are good for conveying knowledge and can help teacher to evaluate students’ comprehension of a subject and the other one is for note-taking and

is used as memorization technique (2013) Furthermore, according to Eppler (2006) each type has its own advantages and disadvantages, some of which are presented as followed Mind maps help stimulate students’ creativity while concept maps provide rapid information and the relationships However, readers can find it difficult to read a mind map when it becomes more complex with lots of ideas Mind maps are somehow difficult and need extensive training Owing to those reasons, in this study, the writer use concept maps for teaching in classroom setting to examine their effects on students’ reading comprehension Some common kinds of concept maps are presented

in the next section

2.1.2.3 Kinds of concept maps

As being discussed in some documents such as All and Huycke, 2007; Atkins, 2009; Dillard and Myers, 2014; McSwain, 2007; Sharma, 2012; Shetty, 2014, concept maps are made up of four main kinds: spider maps, hierarchical maps, flowchart maps and system maps

The first kind, spider maps, as shown in figure 2.3 on the next page, consists of

a main idea or core concepts in the centre of the map and other ideas or

sub-concepts around the centre According to All & Huycke (2007), students draw spider map in order to illustrate not only the hierarchical order but also the interrelatedness of the concepts As can be seen in the map, career is the core concept, which is surrounded by six sub-concepts related to career such as duties and responsibilities, qualifications, working condition, etc Besides, some sub-concepts also have smaller units which help specify the concepts

The chronological or hierarchical concept maps present information in a

“descending order of importance” (All & Huycke, 2007) This means the most general

or important information is placed at the top of the map; then the most specific or least important information is placed at the bottom This kind of map requires students to make out the relationship between a concept and its attributes and among the concepts

Figure 2 3 An example of Spider map (Assessment and Instructional

Alignment, 2007)

Figure 2 4 An example of Hierarchical map

(Kinchin, 1998)

Take the map 2.4 on the previous page as an example The core subject – animals – is placed at the top of the map and the more specific information follows until the least important is placed at the bottom Some words can be written on the lines or arrows in order to show the relationships between the two concepts or giving examples, all of which made up a proposition

The third kind of concept map,

flowchart maps, is different from spider

map in the way it presents the concepts

In this kind of map, the concepts are

presented in a linear way, often to show

cause-effect relationships or process (All

& Huycke, 2007) The concepts in this

kind of map can be displayed vertically or

horizontally In addition, the difference

between hierarchical and flowchart map is

while the former shows the relationships

between the two concepts in relation with

one core concept, the latter shows the

steps of how to do something or the cause

and effect of the two concepts without a

core one

Figure 2.5 shows an example of

flowchart map In this map, a process of

doing a project is shown step by step The

first step is a team member suggests a

project, which is followed by step two –

team discusses idea in a meeting It goes on until it reaches the last step is end of proposal process There are also some situations in which the idea is not good or does

not give enough information Then, the map shows three options for the situation If it

is not good, team will reject and the proposal project is over If it is a good one, team

Figure 2 5 An example of Flowchart map (Create a Basic Flowchart, 2016)

will continue with other steps If it does not give enough information, team will conduct more research and then go back to step two

The last kind of concept maps is the systems maps which can be the most difficult-to-construct According to Shetty (2014), a system map “indicates the key components of a system and its environment, and their broad inter-relationship at any point in time” The key components are placed inside the boundary and its environment is what outside the boundary The environment contains the elements that are not part of the system but they influence elements of the system Therefore, the environment should also be paid attention to Shetty also mentioned the usefulness

of systems map in “pulling together initial thoughts”, “clarifying where the boundaries

to any system or element of a system lie”, “working out when any thoughts are a set of any others” and “communicating ideas”

sub-According to figure 2.6, the health center appointments system consists of some elements They are receptionist, patient, doctor and computerized booking system In computerized booking, the two elements make up this system, i.e

computers and network In other words, the smaller system computerized booking system has close relationship with its environment which consist of receptionist,

patient and doctor This shows what a system contains and its relationship to the environment This kind of concept maps is not used to describe the cause-effect relationship, process or sequence; it just reveals the elements of a system in the relation with its environment

Figure 2 6 System map of a health center appointments system (A

System map, 2007)

These kinds of concept maps have similar characteristics such as the use of boxes and lines to link concepts and showing the relationships among them, etc but with different forms Therefore, they also have their own advantages and disadvantages The section below presents the advantages and disadvantages of four kinds of concept maps

2.1.2.4 Advantages and disadvantages of the four kinds of concept maps

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of the four kinds of concept maps shown in Table 2.1 (McSwain, 2007)

Spider map Hierarchical

map Flowchart map Systems map

Advan-tages

Easy to configure Follow a

definite pattern

Information is organized in a logical order

Include all data and relationships among data link theory and practice

Very minimal data shown Difficult to read

Not integrate all

data and their

relationship

critical thinking and problem solving skills

Lack of critical thinking

Take more time

to complete

An incomplete map

Table 2 1 The advantages and disadvantages of four kinds of concept maps

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of concept maps

is essential for readers and instructors to choose the most suitable kind to use

depending on the types of reading text, the level of the readers and context in which it

is used

Moreover, there are two ways of drawing concept maps They are blank concept maps and learner-constructed concept maps The first type known as construct-on-scaffold is the one that is constructed using software or is created by an expert It provides some blanks for learners to fill in so that they can complete the map

Fill-in-the-to show the relationship among concepts The second one, which has another name is construct-by-self, is constructed by learners themselves, basing on their understanding

of the text or their own summarizing, categorizing of vocabulary, concepts, etc There have been some studies comparing the use of the two ways of drawing concept maps

to examine which one is the more useful for learning Chang, Sung and Chen did a research in 2001, comparing three ways of drawing a concept maps in learning biology: construct on scaffold, construct by self and construct by paper-and-pencil The results showed that the most useful way of creating a concept map for use in learning is construct-on-scaffold; in other words, the fill-in-the-blank concept map is the most useful Another research was conducted by Soleimani and Nabizadeh (2012)

on 90 intermediate pre-university students to compare three strategies i.e fill in the map concept map, learner-constructed and summarizing strategy in their effects on reading comprehension skill After five sessions within three months doing the experiment, they came to a the same conclusion as the 2001’s study of Chang et al that the fill-in-the-map one is “the most influencing one” and reading with concept maps is far more successful than reading with summarizing strategies Thus, teachers can consider a new way of teaching reading comprehension, i.e using fill-in-the-blank concept maps with the help of some soft wares to teach their students

In short, four kinds of concept maps based on its shape or its construction and their advantages as well as disadvantages have been discussed so far Each kind of concept maps has their own merits; thus, teachers should keep in mind that they need

to choose the most suitable kinds of concept maps to teach their students The following section discusses how concept maps can benefit reading comprehension

2.1.3 Benefits of concept maps to reading comprehension

Concept maps are closely related to reading comprehension Reading comprehension according to Ausubel (1963)’s theory is the process of connecting the prior knowledge with the new one Grabe and Stoller (2002) also stated that reading comprehension is an interactive process in a way that “linguistic information in the text interacts with information by readers from long-term memory, as background knowledge” Grabe’s and Stoller’s ideas are similar to Ausubel’s that background knowledge and the new information, new knowledge or linguistic knowledge help construct readers’ interpretation Meanwhile, concept maps help integrate what students have known with what they have just read In other words, both reading comprehension and concept maps emphasize the importance of the assimilation between the existing knowledge with new information (Rosenberg, Saif & Laval, 2010)

Different people have different working memory ability, i.e information activated for storage and processing or can be called short-term memory (Grabe & Stoller, 2002) McVay and Kane (2012) showed in their research that people having high working memory ability, tend to pay more attention to the reading tasks and tend

to be less mind-wandering than those with low working memory ability, which is one

of the factors affecting reading comprehension To put it differently, information gained from the text is processed and activated with existing knowledge and is stored

in working memory in only a short time while this combination is appropriately processed; therefore, this process must be rapid enough so that readers do not lose their attention To help this, concept map is the most suitable strategy According to Novak and Cañas (2008), concept maps help scaffold to organize and structure the knowledge in a hierarchical order, which is easier and more rapid for readers to memorize

Concept maps can aid reading comprehension in some ways First, they help to give readers “clearer and more substantial understanding of what is being read” (Chang, Sung, and Chen, 2002, as cited in Reid, Lienmann and Hagaman, 2013) Concept maps present the key concepts of the reading passage and the interrelationships among concepts, which helps both teachers and students have a

clearer understanding of what is implied in the passage Second, this type of maps helps reader focus on the most important part of reading passage or main ideas (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek and Wei, 2004) This is because concept maps present ideas in a hierarchical order that the most important concepts are placed at the top and more specific ones at the bottom of the map On constructing or analyzing a map, readers can easily know which concept is the core one and which ones are supporting ideas and details gained from the reading text

From what have been discussed so far in this section, concept maps help a lot

in enhancing reading comprehension Concept maps help connect new knowledge with the existing one, which is also the process of reading comprehension Moreover, concept maps help organize ideas and details in a reading passage more easily and rapidly This leads to success in reading comprehension because the more quickly they get the main ideas of the text, the less they get distracted from reading the passage In addition, with the help of concept maps, reading is much easier What is implied in the text and the relationships among concepts are revealed in the maps so that readers can have full understanding of the text In short, maps and reading comprehension have close relationship and concept maps can help improve reading comprehension

Furthermore, concept maps have many benefits on both students and teachers

in their learning and teaching reading To students, concept maps can help highlight the main concepts, facts and events so that they are easier for the students to understand, clarify and comprehend the main ideas of a particular text According to Sahin (2013), concept maps aid teaching strategies, i.e students can use maps to get deep understanding of the subject and integrate the old knowledge to the new one Students can also gain success in comprehension, sense of confidence and problem-solving skills thanks to concept maps Students can also get benefits from those maps

in developing collaboration and improving memory (Cicognani, 2000) Concept maps encourage students to discover new concepts and the relationships among them, and while doing this, students interact with others who are in an attempt to achieve the same educational level Concept mapping can help students increase their test score and decrease their test-taking anxiety (Novak, 1990) Besides, they can also help

students improve social interaction because students need to do concept maps in groups To teachers, concept maps can help to show the ideas, facts and concepts in an easy way for students to understand Teachers use those maps to help motivate students and make lessons more interactive (Bromley, Vitis and Modlo, 1995) They are also served as evaluation tools for educators in order to assess teaching and learning (Novak & Cañas, 2008) Through the maps, teachers can identify the areas that students do not understand so that they can provide students with useful and easier-to-understand instruction helping them gain knowledge and understanding from the maps In addition, it is easy for both teachers and students to read, retrieve and reuse the information in the concept maps Therefore, they are used in many activities

or stages of learning and teaching a language, including learning and teaching reading

Concept maps can be used in three stages of a reading lesson Concept maps can be used as a strategy in pre-reading to learn vocabulary in context within the reading passage (William, 1987) In while-reading stage, the map in the pre-reading stage is then modified according to the information given in the reading text It can also be used in post-reading, according to Novak & Canãs (2008), to summarize the content of the passage that students have just read, which can show students’ understanding of the given text The following section will discuss the use of concept maps in the pre-, while-, and post-stage of a reading lesson in details

2.1.4 Applications of concept maps in reading lessons

In reading lessons, concept maps can help teachers check students’ comprehension, helps students summarize the information after they read the text and supplement the vocabulary used in the text (Sam and Rajan, 2013) Teachers can get students to do a mini test on reading comprehension by giving them a test and ask them to draw a map to represent what is in the text The main ideas of the reading text are presented in the maps Looking at the maps that they have made, students can remember the information in the text longer (Denis & Mallet, 2002; Novak, 2010; Robinson & Schraw, 1994) Following is the use of concept maps in different stages

of a reading lesson

a) Pre-reading stage

Pre-teaching activities are very important in reading lesson because they not only “offer compensation for second language reader’s supposed linguistic or socio-cultural inadequacies” but also “remind readers of what they do, in fact, already know and think, that is to activate existing schematic knowledge” (Ajideh, 2003, pp.6-7) This stage aims to introduce and arouse interest in the topic, motivate learners by giving a reason for reading and to provide some language preparation for the text (William, 1987)

Therefore, in pre-reading stage, teachers should introduce the topic of the text and activate students to think and brainstorm what they have known about the topic and then teachers give instruction of key vocabulary Vocabulary instruction can be done with concept maps by both teachers and students Teachers can ask students to brainstorm what they know about the topic of the reading text using their background knowledge and draw a map on the board or in a large piece of paper if working in groups This step can help students have a good grasp on what is going to be read and motivate students (Meltzer et al., 2001) However, teachers should bear in mind that there are some ideas that distract the content and those should be omitted While drawing a map, teachers draw students’ attention to some new concepts which are in the reading passage After finishing the map, teacher leads students to the lesson

b) While-reading stage

After leading to the lesson, teachers let students have some time to read the text individually and compare the content of the reading text with what they have brainstormed earlier William (1987) used to state that while-reading stage aims to help students draw out the relevant information from the reading text While reading the text, students apply scanning and skimming skills to find the information they need in order to modify the concept maps they have made in the pre-reading stage This action should be done because the ideas in the original map may not be pertinent

to what is in the text At the same time, new information is activated with the background knowledge Then, students are allowed to discuss in small groups to decide which ideas need to be taken out of the first draft maps due to their irrelevance

to the text or which new ideas should be put in

The role of the teacher at this stage is to facilitate students with reading strategies so that they can read and modify the map efficiently Teacher should ask students to underline key words and take notes when they are reading the text After finishing reading, students discuss in groups to reach an agreement in modifying the maps Comprehension questions should be asked to check students’ understanding of the text Students of different levels of proficiency should be paid attention to in order that teacher can evaluate their comprehension

c) Post-reading stage

At this stage of the lesson, students are allowed to share their maps to other groups and tell what they have omitted and what they have put in Other groups give feedbacks on their friends’ maps in comparison with theirs Teachers also give feedbacks and correct students’ maps Irrelevant and redundant information should be excluded and needed information should be added in This is the stage when both teachers and students can have an overall look and revise on what have been read and relate the information with students’ prior knowledge and opinions (William, 1987) Therefore, a summarizing is necessary for students in a way that they can consolidate what they have read so far and teachers can base on their summarizing to decide whether they understand the text or not

2.2 Summaries of previous studies on effects of concept maps on reading comprehension

The studies of concept maps’ effects on reading comprehension are not significant as Jiang and Grabe (2007) stated that there is still a lack of research which examines the efficacy of concept maps in second language (L2) in general and in L2 reading comprehension Below are some of the few studies into the effectiveness of concept maps on L2 reading comprehension

Many years ago, concept maps were researched to testify their effects on reading comprehension In 1989, Anderson and Huang investigated the effects of concept maps in grade-eight students’ comprehension of expository texts The results viewed that students improved their learning in not only reading but also their scores

at school Despite of the fact that students improved their reading comprehension, most of them showed no positive attitudes towards the use of concept maps at school

In 1998, Chen examined the effects of concept maps on reading comprehension and summarization of elementary students in scientific subject The results of this study were different from what has been reviewed in the preceding paragraph about the study of Anderson and Huang (1989) In this study, the researcher concluded that concept mapping had no effects on students’ reading comprehension and summarization

In 2006, Vakilifard, Armand and Baron conducted a study of the effects of

‘concept mapping’ on second language learners' comprehension of informative text

In this study, they divided the subject – French advanced learners in second language

– into two groups The students in the control group were taught with traditional approach which means the teacher had to explain new words and expressions and

discussed the concepts Meanwhile, those in the experimental group were taught reading with concept maps The concept maps were made using Cmap tools and concept mapping was used in the pre and post stages of the teaching reading process

At the end of the four-week experiment, the researchers drew a conclusion that the experimental group had better performance in reading informative text than the control one

According to Ghanizadeh (2007), the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students in the experimental group in his research outperformed those of the control group in reading comprehension This study revealed that those students in the experimental group could get the main idea of the text, as well as the interrelationship among concepts Besides, the students showed positive attitudes towards reading comprehension with the help of concept maps This was contrary to the results of Anderson and Huang in 1989 when the results revealed that the students were unwilling to use concept maps at school

In 2008, Liu and Chen investigated the effects of computer-assisted concept mapping on reading strategies of EFL Taiwanese students The results of this study showed that computer-assisted concept mapping had more reading benefits for the high-level group of students than the low-level ones

Oliver also did a research on the relationship between concept mapping and reading comprehension of science texts in 2009 In his study, he examined how well

74 sixth graders of science represented text structures from a 900-word textbook chapter on soil conservation The students were given a concept map template with 4 super-ordinate terms and 24 unsorted concepts The study brought many interesting results After the experiment, the students found themselves not only successful in

classifying pre-selected terms but also interested in making a map in pairs or groups

while reading the text The study also revealed that there was no significant difference

of the performance of students from different levels of learning This result proves that concept maps have positive effects on students’ learning regardless of learning levels

Another study was done in 2010 by Dias to examine the effectiveness of using concept maps as a strategy for learning reading comprehension in English as a second language The students were taught what a concept map is, its characteristics and how

to construct one using Cmap Tools available on the Internet At the end of the study, the students showed interests in using concept maps in reading English texts and they said they would go on using them in other subjects The maps they made improved day by day, which could mean that their reading comprehension somehow improved

as they could express their understanding through their maps

In the same year, 2010, Liu, Chen and Chang investigated the effects of computer-assisted concept mapping on reading abilities of poor and good students The results showed that poor students could get more benefits from computer-assisted concept mapping than the good ones The poor students could understand the reading texts by looking at the connections shown in the visual maps The results of this study were the different from those of the 2008 study of Liu and Chen that the high-level students gained more benefits than the low-level ones However, these results of Liu

et al stated the same results as Chiang and Guo (1997) that students with middle or low level of reading ability had more benefits from concept mapping

In 2012, Kalhor and Shakibaei worked together on a study named ‘Teaching reading comprehension through concept map’ Before the treatment, the students were tested to make sure the resemblance of reading comprehension performance After the experiment of learning reading comprehension with concept maps, they showed significant changes in posttest scores With this kind of learning, students improved

their reading skills, i.e concept maps had positive effects on students’ reading comprehension

A year later, in 2013, a same study was done on 31 grade-6th-elementary students working outdoor by Sahin The difference between the two studies of Vakilifard’s and Sahin’s is the instruments While the former got the results from the list of questionnaires composed of 10 reading comprehension items, the latter used Quiz of Reading Comprehension Skill (QRCS) in both pre and posttests in order to decide whether the students’ performances improved or not The increase in the posttest scores compared to the pretest ones reveals that the use of concept maps in teaching reading skills for elementary students had positive effects

In an attempt to investigate the effects of concept maps on reading comprehension of 25 students of English Department at Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Ma’arif in Lampung, Indonesia, Jaya did a research in 2013 using 5 measurements instruments, i.e observation sheet, field notes, interview, test, and questionnaire to collect the data The results of this study showed that concept maps could improve students’ comprehension in three stages of a reading lesson, namely pre-reading, while-reading and post reading Moreover, students stated that they really enjoyed lessons with concept maps and most of them agreed that they could gain benefits from learning with concept maps

According to Yousofi and Seidi (2015), after the treatment, the students of both control group and experimental group improved their reading comprehension significantly Yet, the students of the experimental group who had learnt reading with concept maps outperformed those in the control group who had learnt with traditional method in reading

In Vietnam, some studies on concept maps have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of using concept maps in learning other subjects and learning language In 2010, Bui made a study on the effectiveness of concept maps in learning biology (grade 12) in Thai Nguyen Province In her research, Bui investigated the biology textbook and concept mapping and then made a lesson plan teaching biology

to grade 12 students of Bai Chay High School The results showed that concept maps have positive effect on students’ biology learning Pham (2012) also stated in his

research that concept maps if used appropriately could be an innovative strategy for grade-ten students in learning Physics The study was conducted in Thanh Binh High School in Dong Nai province Another study was done in June 2015 by Nguyen and Doan They conducted a study to testify the use of concept maps in Maths The results revealed that this kind of maps could help students systemize the Maths formulas so that students can learn more easily and memorize them longer In terms of teaching English, Nguyen (2011) claimed that visual aids including maps helped students in Dao Duy Tu High School, Quang Binh Province improve their English a lot through 3 years’ of experiment and observation She also stated that maps and other kinds of visual aids such as gestures and pictures with the help of technology could draw students’ interests in the lesson; therefore, they can learn with enthusiasm and gain success In terms of reading comprehension, Le (2007) investigated the effects of concept maps on reading comprehension of the students at An Giang University The study concluded that the students improved their reading comprehension with the use

of concept maps in learning reading

Table 2.2 below presents the summary of previous studies which were described in detail in preceding sections

COUNTRY FIELDS

The USA

Reading compreh-ension

Anderson and Huang 1989

The students of grade eight showed better performance in reading comprehension after the treatment; yet, they showed no positive attitudes towards the use

of concept maps at school

Concept mapping had no effects

on elementary students’ reading

Baron pre and post stage Experimental

group had better performance than control group

Students in the experimental group outperformed those in the control group in reading

comprehension and positive attitudes towards reading comprehension with concept maps were shown

Computer-assisted concept mapping had more benefits on high-level group of students than those of low-level groups

After the treatment, the students were successful in classifying re-selected terms and interested in making a map

The students showed interest in learning with concept maps constructed using Cmap tools and their reading comprehension also improved

and Chang 2010

The poor students gained more benefits from computer-assisted concept mapping than the good ones in reading abilities

Shakibaei 2012

Students showed difference in the posttest scores while they had no significant difference in the pretest scores before the treatment

on elementary students’ reading