STUDENT DECLARATION I declare that this study is original and has not been submitted for assessment elsewhere. I declare that this study is my own work and does not involve plagiarism or collusion. I give my consent for the electronic version to be examined by relevant plagiarism software programs. I have made a photocopy or electronic copy of my study, which I can produce if the original is lost for any reason.
Signed: NGUYEN THI NGOC ANH Dated: January 5th, 2017 i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper would not have been completed without the support of many people, to all of whom I am profoundly indebted. In the first place, I would like to express my very deep gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Nguyen Van Do, who has allowed me to carry out this research and guided me patiently during the process of accomplishing this graduation paper. In addition, I would like to give a special thanks to all of my lecturers at Post- Graduate Faculty, who instructed and gave us a great number of precious lessons serving as basic knowledge to carry out this research.
Besides, I would like to say thanks to all of my classmates at Post-Graduate Faculty, who willingly assisted me in terms of spirit and shared previous experience, which helped me avoid drawbacks and shortcomings during study process. Last but not least, this graduation paper could not be achieved without the support and encouragement of all teachers of English and my dearest students at Tri Huy Learning Center. Thanks to all of them, I could conduct the research without facing up to any severe difficulties. Although I have made my greatest efforts to finish this graduation paper, I believe that there are many shortcomings remaining.
Therefore, I hope there will be critiques and suggestions for the completion of this graduation paper so that it will be useful for me, the readers, and the further researchers in the years to come. Ha noi, January 5th, 2017 The Writer Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Abstract This is a classroom action research aimed at identifying whether the use of Mind Mapping strategy was effective in improving the students’ writing achievement. In addition, the second purpose of the research is to describe the process of teaching writing through Mind Mapping. The research was conducted over six lessons at Tri Huy Learning Center (THLC) in the academic year of 2016 – 2017 and the target population consisted of 30 students in Grade 10.
The paper-based questionnaires were delivered to students to explore the situation of the research problem. Informal interviews with the students were then conducted to get their ideas about applying the new teaching and learning method. During the lessons, it did not seem to be difficult for students to follow the teaching-learning process. In particular, they showed their excitement and interest in the lesson.
Employing the data analysis, the writer comes to a conclusion that students at Tri Huy Learning Center can improve their writing skills through mind mapping. Keywords: Mind Mapping, Writing, Writing Skills,… iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of Contents STUDENT DECLARATION ………………………………….iii TABLE OF CONTENT …………………………………….iv LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………. Rationale of the study ………………………………………. Aims of the study …………………………………………………………….
Scope of the study ………………………………………………………. The Significance of the Research ……………………………. Methods of the study……………………………………………………….5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………. Definitions of Writing ……………………………….
Definition of Writing skills …………………………………………………. Definitions of Mind mapping……………………. How to create mind mapping …………………………………………………. The Use of Mind mapping in classroom …………………………………….
The difference between mindmapping and modeling for teaching writing.19 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY………………………. General description of Tri Huy Learning Center (THLC) and the teaching and learning of English………………………………. Teachers of English and students at THLC ………. The Setting of Time………………………………………………………….22 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Implementation of the Action Research …………………………………. Data collection instruments ……………………………………………. Student’s writing samples………………………………………………. Data collection procedures…………………………………….
Data analysis procedures ………………………….29 CHAPTER III: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION…………. Results of Survey questionnaire …………. Figure 1 - Interest towards mind mapping ……………………………. Figure 2- Usage of mind mapping …………………………………….
Figure 3- Anxiety in preparing the test ……………………………. Figure 4 - Using mind mapping to write a lot of topics…………………………. Figure 5 - Relating new information to the old………………………………. The first question……………………………………………………………….
The second question ………………………………………………………………36 3. The third question………………………………………………………………. The fourth question……………………………………………………………. Findings and discussion ……………………………………………….
Difficulties during the study process …………………………………. To further researchers ………………………………………………………………44 REFERENCES ….………I APPENDICE Appendix A: Questionnaire ……………………….…III Appendix B: Questions for Informal Interview ……………………………….IV Appendix C: Lesson plan Sample ……………………………….………………VI v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLE Table 1: The schedule of the action implementation…………….25 LIST OF FIGURE Figure 1 - Interest towards mind mapping …………….…30 Figure 2- Usage of mind mapping ………………………….32 Figure 3 - Anxiety in preparing the test …………………….35 Figure 4 - Using mind mapping to write a lot of topics…………36 Figure 5 - Relating new information to the old……………….…37 vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Rationale of the study It can’t be denied that writing as well as other language skills plays an important part in language teaching and learning process. Without writing, the learners do not know how to write even informal letters to their relatives, birthday cards for their friends or Curriculum Vitae helping them apply for jobs.
More seriously, great works of literature, scientific reports, famous learning skill books, as well as textbooks cannot be recorded and transmitted from generation to generation. Like other skills, writing is considered one of the most significant connecting devices which help us exchange information, communicate, and update news or events occurring throughout the world every day. Only with a double click will we receive thousands of results relating to what we want to know under written form in a very short time, even less than one second. Due to the importance of writing skill, people have a tendency to show more concern about this issue and make attempts to find out a lot of different new approaches and techniques to meet the learner’s need.
Accordingly, the questions of which is suitable to most of the learners and how to teach writing effectively are catching a mixed variety of attention from not only linguistic professionals but also learners all over the world. Nevertheless, many language learners claim that it is too difficult for them to write in another language and they regard it as the most complicated language skills to be learned, in comparison with other language skills. Heaton (1988: 135) asserts that “Writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical device but also of conceptual and judgmental elements”. Therefore, if learners want to master writing skill, they need to master both grammatical norms and have ability to use correctly at least 2000 word families.
As a matter of fact, in addition to being full of grammatical mistakes and lacking vocabulary and structures, another serious problem emerging in Vietnamese learners’ writing skill is that many of them do not know how to organize or arrange ideas for their writings. They often write all possible ideas in their mind using their own 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com experience in those given topics without outlining. Occasionally, they also write what they understand about the topics in Vietnamese employing a lot of Vietnamese common words, then translate into English, and regard it as perfect version. By this way, they use Vietnamese way of thinking to perceive the topics in another language without understanding anything about that of native speakers.
Nevertheless, it may take time to choose the most beautiful words and complicated structures, which accidentally make them forget time pressure required in writing process. In addition, choosing the wrong words in translation process is unavoidable and simultaneously they have difficulty in finding English equivalent terms as well. In fact, they are learning English; therefore, they need to follow British or American straightforward way of thinking. Their writings will not be appreciated by foreign examiners in international standard exams like IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC and so on because of lacking control of length as well as time and using a large amount of difficult and strange vocabulary.
Another point is that traditional teaching methods are commonly used in English classes in Vietnam. Teachers usually supply students with particular topics and some vocabulary cues and ask them to write the content. From my own experiences, teachers mainly focus on spotting grammatical mistakes that students make and asking for corrections without paying attention to teaching them how to organize the content, because they believe this is the best way to improve students writing skills. Accordingly, students begin to be mistaken that the greatest written assignments are those which contain the fewest grammatical mistakes instead of having good content.
Nevertheless, it becomes further noticeable by some teachers that the students’ results in writing assessments which rely heavily on correctness of grammar and spelling only were not a true measure of students writing abilities. As a result, students begin to face up to difficulties in developing their ideas and producing meaningful text, focusing more on the mechanical structure of the written piece. To deal with it, many new techniques and strategies have been applied, and they have soon become phenomena in learning and teaching writing process. And, mind mapping strategy is one of them.
According to Tony Buzan, mind mapping is the 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com most excellent tool helping mind to think regularly (Buzan, 2006:4). He claims that not only Mind Maps show facts, but also show the overall structure of a subject and the relative importance of individual parts of it. It helps students to associate ideas, think creatively, and make connections that might not otherwise make (Tony Buzan, 2010). Using color pencils, pictures, images connected by flexible lines may enable learners to become more creative and pay more attention to writing lessons.
Moreover, mind mapping can also help them narrow their given topics, generate and develop ideas more logically, not just listing all the things they have in mind without any certain orders. To specify, it is one kind of teaching method that can be considered effective in writing activity and may raise learners’ motivation with visual illustration in order to upgrade their skills and get better achievement. On account of the case above, the writer selects to conduct a research entitled “Using mind mapping to help students organize ideas for their writings at Tri Huy Center” with a view to finding out the improvement of this technique. The author chose writing skills as a choice of doing research because of the fact that writing is the same importance as any other skills.
In addition, there have been a lot of researches carried out to measure the effectiveness of using mind mapping in teaching Listening skills, Vocabulary, and Reading skills; therefore, the author wanted to put more efforts into writing skills with a view to helping her own students improve these skills. Last but not least, students at Tri Huy Learning Center mainly focus on grammatical rules and sometimes forget to develop other skills, which leads to their inefficiency in language skills. Those are the reasons why the author made a decision to select writing skills as a theme of the study. Aims of the study This study aims at: 1.
Finding out the improvement of writing skill of students at Tri Huy Learning Center (THLC) in the academic year of 2016-2017 through mind mapping. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Describing the process of teaching writing through mind mapping to students at THLC and making some suggestions on how to apply this technique in teaching and learning writing as well. Research questions In order to address the aims of the study, the researcher can formulate the problem in this research as follow: 1.