The IMPACT OF CONCEPT MAPPING TECHNIQUE ON EFL READING COMPREHENSION: A CASE STUDY

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1 The IMPACT OF CONCEPT MAPPING TECHNIQUE ON EFL READING COMPREHENSION: A CASE STUDY Nouroddin Yousofi PhD in TEFL, Assistant Professor,Department of Literature and Humanities RaziUniversity,Kermanshah, Iran nyousofi@yahoo.com Narges Seidi M.A. student of TEFL, Department of Literature and Humanitie RaziUniversity,Kermanshah,Iran Narges.seidi@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Reading is one of the crucial skills in the second language learning. One of the necessary needs for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners is to learn how to manipulate strategies to get the benefit of reading in second language context. Concept maps are one of the strategies that can be applied by the learners in their reading comprehension. They help learners to connect new information to already ones.to fulfill the aim of the study, 61 EFL advanced students were chosen.then they randomly assigned to two experimental group (concept mapping, 15 males and 16 females) or control group (traditional method, 12 males and 18 females). A pre-test and posttest was run. The results of the pretest revealed that two groups are homogeneous in their reading ability. The experimental group was instructed concept mapping in their reading comprehension while the control group followed traditional method in their reading.the results of ANOVA and T-test revealed that two groups had significant differences in their post test reading comprehension and students in experimental group outperformed those in control group. The findings of this study have some implications in applying appropriate technique to teach reading to EFL learners. KEYWORDS :Concept mapping, EFLadvanced learners, Reading comprehension INTRODUCTION Reading can be viewed as a basic skill in language learning. One of the necessary needs of students is to learn to read for communication.learning how to read definitely help learners to use this skill as a source of getting information. According to Swalander and Taube (2007) good reading ability is the key to success in educational setting and this is why researchers try to find effective educational and psychological variables that can explain variations in reading ability and academic achievement (p.207). In addition, researchers and scholars interested in student motivation and learning in academic settings put much emphasis on the position of the students thoughts and beliefs in learning (Schunk, 2003). In most cases the burden of reading information 163

2 leads to rote memorization and retention of materials rather than meaningful and deep learning (Lambiotte & Dansereau, 1992). Reading is highly dynamic interaction between a reader and the written text. The ultimate goal on the reading is comprehension, When readers are not comprehending, they are not reading (Chastain, 1988). Reading comprehension is very crucial for university students; with help of reading they can expand their repertoire of information and knowledge. Unfortunately in Iran educational context there is no special policy to teach the students strategies for better comprehension. In this educational system, students are not taught with any special strategy and consequently they cannot interact with the text and as a result, many of them lose their interests in reading in English that leads to be unsuccessful in their English courses. So finding an efficient approach which facilitates learners' learning and help them comprehend better seems to be quiet necessary ˮ (Jalilifar, 2010: P 98 ). Antoniou and Souvignier (2007) point out that "effective reading requires the use of strategies that are explicitly taught (p:43). According to Barnett (1988) reading strategies are referred to as mental operations which are used by readers when they read a text and try to understand it effectively.hence,the most successful students are those who manipulate different strategies to help them to cope with their problems in this regard.teachers can have effective roles in introducing new strategies to the students in facing with their difficulties. One of the strategies that can be used by EFL learners in their reading comprehension is concept mapping.the beneficial effects of concept mapping on different educational outcome has been demonstrated by many researchers (Ojima, 2006; Snead & Wanda, 2004; Chularute & DeBacker; 2004). In the light of mentioned benefits of teaching techniques for reading comprehension, the present study aims to investigate the effects of concept mapping technique on EFL advanced students. reading comprehension. Since the reading comprehension is very crucial in advanced level Students successful in this regard increase their proficiency and make them more motivated toward their goals and achievements. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Theoretical background Concept mapping was introduced by Joseph Novak for the first time in Concept mapping is a graphic organizational technique design to help individual and group to explain and explore their knowledge and understanding a topic ˮTalebinejad and Mousapour (2007). In a concept map, concepts are framed in circles or boxes and the relationship between them are illustrated by connecting lines which link two concepts. The written words on connecting lines show the relationship between two concepts. Concepts defined as a perceived regularities in events or objects, designated by a label (Novak & Canas, 2006).Concept map helps learners to link previous knowledge to novel information, and manifest related ideas.drawing map lead students to engage in learning process actively.concept mapping reveals in what ways readers 164

3 remember, organize, interpret, and understand (Derbentseva, Safayeni & Cañas, 2004: 3). information in a particular subject area Two theories support the use of concept mapping in education. One is Constructivist theory; it implies that learners take with them their previous knowledge to class which is influenced by cultural and ethnic factor (Colburn, 2000) Constructivists believe that the way individual understand their experiences forms meaning. In other words what we know is constructed by our personal experience. The other theory which supports concept mapping is Ausubel assimilation theory. Ausubel (1968) classifies learning into two categories, a) meaningful and b) rote learning;"meaningful learning happens when the learner consciously and deliberately chooses to relate new knowledge to knowledge the learner already knows" (Novak, 1998: 19, cited in Shimerda, 2007: 120). Teaching reading strategies are among the ways to enhance learners reading comprehension. Oxford (1990) states that learning strategies are specific action taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, and more enjoyable and more effective ˮ (p.8).various strategies can be manipulated to increase students reading comprehension,one of them which seems to enhance students reading comprehension is concept mapping. Related studies Several studies have been done to investigate the effect of concept mapping on different language skills. Some of them revealed the effectiveness of concept mapping on reading comprehension. Gobert and Clement (1999) point out that, the students who used concept map in their reading, can illustrate their interpretation of the text in a visual way while in traditional method; the knowledge embedded in the written form is not completely meaningful to the learners. Contrary and Chen (1998) found out that, concept mapping is not effective in the students reading comprehension and summarization. Accordingly Han (2006) investigate the effect of concept mapping reading instruction and traditional reading instruction for Chinese EFL learners. Three different areas were investigated: main idea reading, subordinate idea reading and reading between lines. The results reveal that there is no significant difference in three reading areas between two instructions. According to Hibbing and Rankin-Erickson (2003) teachers can apply concept mapping strategies for testing the students' vocabulary rather than testing them on word definitions. They further state that concept mapping act as a stimulator which activate the learners' previous knowledge. As a result develop related instead of isolated word knowledge. In another study, Snead and Wanda (2004) investigate the effects of using concept mapping on the science achievement of middle grade science students. The finding of the study showed that low ability students get the benefit of concept mapping more than high ability students, in another word; low ability students outperformed the high ability students. Chularut and DeBacke (2004) investigated The influence of concept mapping on achievement, self-regulation,and self-efficacy in students of English as a second language The finding of the research revealed that the concept mapping group showed significantly greater gains from pre-test to post-test than the control group who had self study. 165

4 Khajavi and Ketabi (2010) studied the influence of concept mapping on reading comprehension and self-efficacy of intermediate EFL students. After treatment sessions in experimental group results indicated that students in the concept mapping group showed greater achievement than students in the control group. In the same vein,moreira and Moreira (2011) investigate the effects of concept mapping on context comprehension of course book and achieving meaningful.the results of study show that text concept mapping is effective in students meaningful learning and students self-confidence enhance with using concept mapping. Accordingly, Shaul (2011) conducted a study in which she investigated the effects of studentgenerated, concept mapping on the performance of EFL, grade 12, students in reading comprehension texts. The results indicated that low- knowledge students who generate their maps had better reading comprehension than those of high-knowledge students or both control groups. Besides, students' disposition toward self-generated concept mapping had a progressive positive change, regardless of students level. Most recently DeylamSalehi., Jahandar, and Khodabandehlou.(2013) studied the impact of concept mapping on Iranian EFL student s reading comprehension in two high schools in Iran.With regard to the results of the study,the experimental group who manipulate concept mapping in their reading comprehension outperformed the control group with traditional reading method. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The present study aims to answer to the following questions: 1-Is there any differential effect between reading comprehension of students who apply concept mapping in their reading comprehension under treatment and students in control group who used traditional method? 2-Is there significant differences between males and females students in reading comprehension applying concept mapping? METHODLOGY Participants The population under study in this research were 68 (31 male and 37 female) EFL students. They studied in Kish language institute, a private institute in Kermanshah, they were learning General English at advanced level. They were enrolled in TOEFL preparation class. The age of the participants ranged from 25 to 34. In order to have homogeneous groups, prior to the study, a placement test was held. From the first population 7 were omitted, after attending placement test due to low grade and not meeting the benchmark for attending this study. Later the participants were randomly assigned to either experimental (concept mapping, 15 males and 16 females) or control group (traditional method, 12 males and 18 females). 166

5 Instruments A reading comprehension test was used as a pretest and posttest in the study. It included 8 passages were select from Active reading Book two (Anderson, 2007)The test was pilot by 15 students who were at the same level of proficiency, but did not take part in the study.based on the results of pilot study, two passages were omitted and then the modified version was used for the main study. Besides, the researcher prepared a handout based on some sources like Novak and Canas (2006) in order to familiar students with concept mapping, how to draw a concept map as well as some examples. To measure students progress in reading ability, a reading test was run. There were 50 items in the test.each item received 1 scores which made 50 score for the whole test. Procedure The participants were first briefed about the purpose of the study.prior to conducting the study both groups were given a reading text to measure their reading comprehension. After pretesting session the students participated in ten 60-min study sessions (two session in a week).the reading passages were the same for both groups but they were instructed by different methods i.e. concept mapping and traditional methods. In experimental group, at the first session students were introduced to the concept mapping.then the teacher explained its effects on reading comprehension, trained students how to connect pieces of information and found the relationship between them and finally draw maps.the students were required to study the handout for the next sessions.in the following sessions the participants work on reading text, highlight the concepts, draw maps and receive feedbacks from the instructor but in control group (traditional method), the participants received no special instruction and follow conventional methods i.e., they are required to read the text, look up unknown words from the dictionary and at the end, the instructor and the students discuss about the text and some synonyms and antonyms were provided for the unknown words. At the end of treatment, a reading comprehension test with the same level of readability was run as a post test for both control and experimental group. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION For the purpose of data analysis, the data on pre-test and post-test were gathered and analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences; SPSS.16.Then ANOVA was applied to calculate differences between two groups. In order to answer the research questions, descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Tables 1 and 2 show the descriptive and inferential statistics of the two groups. Table 1. Compare the mean scores for both experimental and control group. The mean score for experimental group and control group was (M=30.01) and (M=24.61) respectively. The ANOVA was conducted to investigate the mean score of both groups. As showed F= which is significant at P=.000, revealed that there is a significant difference between two groups. 167

6 Table 1: Descriptive and inferential analysis of the pretest and the posttest and the results of the independent F-test of the study Group Mean Std. Deviation F df1 df sig Experimental Control Table 2 reveals in experimental group, T= 8.24 which is significant in p =.000 which showed that, the participant in experimental group outperformed the control group. Table 2: Paired Samples Statistics of pre-test and post-test in both groups. group Mean Std. Deviation Std. Mean T sig. (2-tailed) Posttest Experimental Pretest Posttest Control Pretest Figure 1: Control and Experimental group achievement 168

7 The above diagram shows clearly that there is a significant difference between the experimental and the control group.it confirms that EFL students that were instructed with concept mapping gained higher scores in reading comprehension than the control group. Table 3 indicates that there are no differences between males and females in reading comprehension manipulating concept mapping instruction. The results of T-test on the performance of the students are shown in Table 3. Table 3: Results of T-test on the performance of the students Gender Mean Std. Deviation Std. Mean Error T Sig. (2-tailed) Male Female According to the results of the study, concept mapping instruction had significant effects on EFL advanced level students. The results of this study is in line with Chang, Chen and Sung, (2002) who maintain that concept mapping has significant role in encouraging students reading comprehension in writing summaries, developing vocabulary increasing self awareness in learning, reviewing material and in reading as a whole.however, the findings of this study is in contrast with Han (2006) and Chan (1998) who state that concept mapping is not effective in reading comprehension.it seem that better performance of the experimental group over the control group is that with drawing maps,the students connect their new information to their previous one. According to Ozek and Civelek (2006), proficient readers could make prediction and hypotheses about the text content by linking the new information to their previous knowledge. In concept mapping instruction the learners discover the relationship between different concepts in the text that contribute to deeper insight into the text. Concept mapping help learners to activate their background knowledge and schemata when they are trying to draw maps that lead to involvement in learning process actively and this engagement cause to meaningful learning. Furthermore, effective learning which comes from active student participation can ultimately shape their language development (Vygotsky, 1978). Effective learning and increased motivation for a subject rely on educational experiences, appropriate subject matter and connecting previous schemas to new learning (Bruner 1978; Gardner, 1978). Concept mapping as a strategy in education is parallel with the movement from teacher to learner and as a result has the power to improve academic achievement (Peterson & Snyder, 1998). Askov (1991) pointed out that an effective teacher should help students be efficient at selflearning. Therefore, students needed study skills which they could apply while reading inside and outside of class. He also explained that the concept mapping technique is a study skill that helped students sees relationships between the messages since they required learners to think through while constructing the maps. As a cognitive tool, Concept maps, can serve as a scaffold to cognitive development as they may lower cognitive load, enhance connections between 169

8 complex Constructs, and offer paths for retrieving and accessing knowledge (Novak & Gowin, 1985; O'Donnell, Dansereau & Hall, 2002). CONCLUSION According to the results of the study, using concept mapping technique had a significant role on EFL reading comprehension. This technique hinders memorization, which is boring for the learners and lead them to meaningful learning by connecting new knowledge to previous learned one. The findings of this study have great implications for both students and teachers. Teachers should always seek new strategies to help students solve their problems in learning language. Teachers can introduce this technique to the students to improve their reading comprehension. In addition, it enables the teacher to perceive the area that students do not have sufficient knowledge and help them to fill this gap. With learning this technique, Students reading comprehension achievements enhance and in this way they will be motivated to read and reading turns to an enjoyable activity. Accordingly, this strategy allows learners to learn new vocabularies, grasp the main ideas of the text and make connection between the concepts that leads to meaningful learning. Besides, because concept mapping is a student-center strategy; they have more chances to work on reading outside the classroom context. Additionally, concept mapping is an effective tool to organize ideas and thoughts and make the retrieving the details easier.additional research could be investigation the effect of concept mapping on the other language skills such as listening and writing and speaking. It should be noted that this study conducted in a private institute with limited number of students,.so,this limited number of participants,limits the generalizability of the findings of the study. Hence, findings need to be reported cautiously.in order to generalize the results of the study more population should be taken into account. REFERENCES Antoniou, F., & Souvignier, E. (2007). "Strategy instruction in reading comprehension Anintervention study for students with learning disabilities", in Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 5(1), Askov, E.N. (1991). Teaching Study Skills. In Bernard L. Hayes (Eds.), Effective Strategies for Teaching Reading(pp ). Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon Ausubel, D. P. (1968). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bruner, J. (1978). Towards a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Butcher, K. R. (2006). Learning from text with diagrams: Promoting mental model development and inference generation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98 (1) Chang, K., Chen, I., & Sung, Y. (2002). "The effect of concept mapping to enhance text comprehension and summarization", in The Journal of Experimental Education, 71 (1),

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