The effect of concept mapping on efl learners writing performance at vinh dinh high school in quang tri province

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HUE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
----------------------

NGUYEN TRUONG QUYNH TRANG

THE EFFECT OF CONCEPT MAPPING ON EFL
LEARNERS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT VINH DINH
HIGH SCHOOL IN QUANG TRI PROVINCE

MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Assoc. Prof. Dr. TRUONG VIEN

HUE, 2013
i


BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ
TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
----------------------

NGUYỄN TRƢƠNG QUỲNH TRANG

SỰ TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA PHƢƠNG PHÁP LẬP BẢN ĐỒ
KHÁI NIỆM ĐẾN VIỆC NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG VIẾT
CHO HỌC SINH TẠI TRƢỜNG THPT VĨNH ĐỊNH

TỈNH QUẢNG TRỊ

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƢƠNG PHÁP
DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH
MÃ SỐ: 60140111

NGƢỜI HƢỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS.TS. TRƢƠNG VIÊN

HUẾ, 2013
ii


STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings
discussed in the thesis are true and have not been published elsewhere.

Author

Nguyen Truong Quynh Trang

iii


ABSTRACT
Traced back to 1972, concept mapping was the early work of Novak and his
research team at Cornell University. This study examined the potential of
concept mapping in an attempt to improve EFL learners’ writing
performance. The one-group pretest-treatment-posttest procedure was
adopted with 35-tenth-grade students participating in the study. The study

comprised of three major parts. Initially, students’ perception towards using
concept mapping in writing yielded, pertaining to questionnaires and
interviews, showed their attitudes towards this strategy. Next, pairwise
comparison regarding five subscales, namely Content, Organization,
Vocabulary, Language use, and Mechanics at two points of measures was
analyzed to illuminate the impact of concept mapping on students’ writing
performance. Recommendations stemming from teachers’ interviews and
class observation sheet were, by the same token, proposed to strengthen the
effect of concept mapping. The findings were that positive attitudes pervaded
the utilization of concept mapping and the students’ writing performance
measurably improved in the light of Content, Organization, Vocabulary, and
Language use. The ideas of providing students with more training sessions
and incorporating the strategy in other skills was heartily recommended to
facilitate the effect of concept mapping in educational purposes.

iv


Acknowledgements
This research is a milestone in all my personal and professional endeavors. I
am eternally grateful to a number of people who helped to bring this project to
fruition.
My thanks first go to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Truong Vien, for his
constant encouragement, invaluable assistance and suggestions throughout this
long journey despite his many other academic and professional commitments. I
have been extremely lucky to have a supervisor who cared so much about my
work.
I would like to thank Dr. Luu Trong Tuan, currently a teacher at National
University of Ho Chi Minh City, for enlightening me the first glance of research
and his insightful comments.

I wish to send my appreciation to all the teaching staff and students at Vinh
Dinh High School who participated in this study for their willingness to help
me with questionnaires, class observations and interviews.
My thesis would not have come to a completion without the help from my
colleague, Nguyen Thi Yen, who kindly provided technical guidance during the
adoption of Inspiration software for my research.
I am also deeply indebted to all my friends, especially to Tu Liem, Minh Tri,
Tram Hang, for their whole-hearted help and encouragement when I deal with
the data. In particular, I am grateful to Nam who helped me download the
precious reference materials.
I would like to show my deep gratitude to my beloved family- my
grandmother, my father, my mother and my siblings who shared all of the ups
and downs of my academic endeavors with their boundless love and continuous
support – both materially and spiritually; my mother-in-law for all her tender
care and profound understanding.
There are not words to express my gratitude to my husband, Hong Viet, for his
endless encouragement and unfailing belief in my ability to conduct this
research amidst the distance that separated us.
In a word, my sincere gratitude goes to all of those without whose support my
study would not have been made possible.

v

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUB COVER PAGE .................................................................................................. i
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ....................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................... vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.................................................................................. ix
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... x
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. xi
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1
1.1. Rationale ...........................................................................................................1
1.2. Aim of the study ...............................................................................................7
1.3. Scope of the study ............................................................................................7
1.4. Significance of the study ..................................................................................7
1.5. Research questions ...........................................................................................7
1.6. Organization of the thesis .................................................................................7
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 9
2.1. An overview of Concept mapping....................................................................9
2.1.1. Definition of concept maps and concept mapping ..................................... 9
2.1.2. The theory pertaining to concept mapping ............................................... 10
2.1.3. The construction of concept maps ............................................................ 12
2.1.4. Procedures for constructing concept maps ............................................... 15
2.1.5. Application of concept mapping in language learning ............................. 16
2.1.5.1. Concept mapping facilitates collaborative learning via collaborative
concept maps .................................................................................................16
2.1.5.2. Concept mapping as a tool to enhance critical thinking ability ........16
2.1.5.3. Concept mapping as a promising tool in planning stage ..................17
2.1.5.4. Concept maps facilitate reading comprehension ..............................18
2.2. English writing process ..................................................................................19
2.3. Related studies ................................................................................................23
vi


2.4. Summary.........................................................................................................28

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD ................................................................ 29
3.1. Research design ..............................................................................................29
3.2. Participants .....................................................................................................30
3.2.1. Students ..................................................................................................... 30
3.2.2. Teachers .................................................................................................... 30
3.3. Materials .........................................................................................................30
3.4. Research instruments ......................................................................................31
3.4.1. Questionnaire .................................................................................................. 31
3.4.2. Tests on English writing.................................................................................. 32
3.4.3. Interview ......................................................................................................... 32
3.4.4. Class observation sheet ................................................................................... 33
3.5. Data collection procedure ...............................................................................33
3.6. Data analysis ...................................................................................................36
3.7. Composition scoring rubrics ..........................................................................36
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................... 37
4.1. Students’ perception towards the use of concept maps in writing class ........37
4.1.1. The usefulness of using concept maps in writing ..................................... 37
4.1.2. Students’ current attitudes towards using concept mapping in writing
process ................................................................................................................. 40
4.1.2.1. After practicing concept mapping activities .....................................40
4.1.2.2. Possibility of using concept mapping ...............................................42
4.1.3. Ways to conduct concept mapping activities in writing ........................... 43
4.1.4. Difficulties in concept mapping activities ................................................ 46
4.1.5. Mean score of students’ perceptions towards the use of concept maps in
writing class ........................................................................................................ 49
4.2. Participants’ writing performance in two measures .......................................50
4.2.1. Pairwise comparison of the mean scores of pretest and posttest .............. 50
4.2.2. Pairwise comparison of mean scores between pretest and posttest
regarding five subscales....................................................................................... 52
vii

4.2.3. Correlation between pretest and posttest mean scores .................................... 54
4.3. Teachers’ perception towards the use of concept maps to writing instruction ...56
4.3.1. Credits of concept mapping in writing ..................................................... 56
4.3.3. Recommendations to strengthen the effects of concept mapping to
writing instruction ............................................................................................... 60
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS ...................................... 65
5.1. Summary of research findings ........................................................................65
5.2. Pedagogical implications ................................................................................66
5.2.1. For instructors ........................................................................................... 66
5.2.2. For students ............................................................................................... 67
5.3. Limitations of the study ..................................................................................68
5.4. Suggestions for further research .....................................................................68
5.5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................69
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 70
APPENDICES ......................................................................................................... 79

viii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
No

Abbreviation

Full version

1

EFL

English as a foreign language

2

ESL

English as a second language

3

MOET

Ministry of Education and Training

4

PASW

Predictive Analytics Software

5

Ss

Students

6

T

Teacher

ix


LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1: Cluster components .................................................................................. 32
Table 4.1: The usefulness of using concept mapping in pre-writing stage ............... 39
Table 4.2: Mean score of the usefulness of concept mapping in writing process .... 40
Table 4.3: Mean score of students’ current attitudes towards using concept mapping . 43
Table 4.4: Ways to conduct concept mapping activities ........................................... 44
Table 4.5: Ways to concept mapping activities ........................................................ 46
Table 4.6: Mean score of difficulties in concept mapping activities ........................ 49
Table 4.7: Mean score of students’ perception towards using concept mapping in
writing class ........................................................................................... 50
Table 4.8: The paired t-test to compare the difference between the mean scores of
pretest and posttest ................................................................................ 52
Table 4.9: The paired t-test to compare the difference between mean scores of
pretest and posttest regarding five subscales ......................................... 54

x


LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: Key memory system of the brain all interact when we are learning ...... 11
Figure 2.2: Concept map notation ............................................................................. 12
Figure 2.3: Concept Map about Concept Maps by Novak ........................................ 13
Figure 2.4: A student-generated computer-based concept map – Unit 13: Dolphins14

Figure 2.5: The cognitive process model of the composing process ........................ 21
Figure 4.1: Students’ attitudes after practicing concept mapping activities ............. 40
Figure 4.2: Possibility of using concept mapping ..................................................... 42
Figure 4.3: Difficulties in concept mapping activities .............................................. 48
Figure 4.4: The boxplot shows the relationship between pre and post test mean
scores ..................................................................................................... 51
Figure 4.5: Mean score of two variables: pretest and posttest .................................. 52
Figure 4.6: The scatterplot to show correlation between pretest and posttest scores55
Figure 4.7: The improvement in the second concept map when compared to the
first one ................................................................................................. 58
Figure 4.8: Multiple responses to strengthen concept mapping to writing instruction .. 61
Figure 4.9: “Snow White and seven dwarfs” concept map....................................... 62

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes the rationale, aim of the study, scope and significance of the
research. The chapter ends with organization of the thesis.
1.1. Rationale
The emergence of English as the number one foreign language in Vietnam
can be traced back to 1986, when an overall economic reform known as Doi Moi
(Renovation) was initiated, opening the door of Vietnam to the whole world.
English becomes nearly the only foreign language to be taught in Vietnam. During
the last decades, Vietnam has implemented rapid reforms in educational system. At
the beginning of 2002, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET)
organized the design of the new curriculum and textbooks. However, it was not
until 2008 that the new textbooks of English were put into use marking the shift in
language teaching and learning methodologies. As a matter of fact, the four skills
distributed evenly in each unit lesson put an end to the dominance of reading

comprehension and grammatical structures in a long time. Among the four skills,
writing is deemed to be difficult for students; and teaching writing effectively is a
daunting prospect for teachers within the context of teaching and learning English
in Vietnam. What causes Vietnamese students at loss how to write when they are
supposed to write and teachers feel puzzled when considering how to teach writing
effectively? Following are some reasons creating a big word PROBLEM that result
in students’ poor writing performance and their unfavorable perceptions towards
learning to write, especially, reflecting the practical realities of teaching and
learning writing in the researcher’s study context.
A big word PROBLEM derives from Practice limitation in writing, Roles of
teachers and learners in writing classes, Over-emphasis on the finished product,
Brainstorming and organizing ideas for writing – limited capabilities, Lacking
interests in learning writing, Examination as students’ utmost goal and Mismatch
between testing and teaching in English language teaching. It is believed that they
remain interrelationships causing the big “problem” word of writing instruction.
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Practice limitation in writing
The reality is of course, no minimum or maximum, that writing lesson
appears in 8 sessions per semester, hence, this means that few opportunities for
writing practice open to students. With this time constraint, it is unavoidable that
students have trouble with writing. More detailed, whilst students’ English is
limited, the prescribed lesson is so long, and normally, three tasks within each
writing lesson. According to Le and Barnard (2009), time is always a matter of
concern for many teachers since they are mandated to finish the tasks in each
writing lesson within forty-five-minute-period. Students are pushed all the time
otherwise the teacher’s lesson plan will “get burnt”. With such assumption
existing in the classroom, students are barely afforded the opportunity to practice
in writing. Additionally, the heavy study load, with 10-11 courses per semester,

more or less, makes students busy with revising what they have learnt, preparing
new lessons of other subjects and, consequently, they are left little time to
practice writing outside classroom. Little by little, it is not surprising that their
self-study, finding out the extra knowledge outside textbook and a desire to
improving their writing performance will become a luxurious prospect. It is
irrefutable that, suffering from the limited time for writing and lacking skills for
self-study, not many of the students can acquire enough linguistic input,
promoting their creativeness as well as linguistic skills to scaffold their ideas in
their writing process.
Role of teachers and students in writing classes
Apparently, due to the influence of Confucian philosophy in thousands of
years, which demands obedience and respect to superiors, Vietnamese students
regard their teachers as a source of knowledge and are deemed to be passive
recipients of knowledge. This habit prevents students from exploring new
knowledge, enriching their knowledge based on prior information, taking into
account the active participation in collaborative environment. They tend to be
“spoon-fed” rather than having to work out for themselves. Although much effort
has been made by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education in the attempt to
2


revolutionize the teaching of writing, the result seems to have been anything but
disappointment for the teaching of writing in Vietnamese classrooms, as it remains
too teacher-centred.
Ngo (2009) also claims that in the Vietnamese writing classrooms, “the
interaction happens merely one-way, between the teacher and the learners, and the
key activity in writing is to imitate and manipulate model passages that are prepackaged” (p. 2). In particular, it is against Vietnamese tradition to put teachers in a
par with their students. With such tradition, it appears easy to understand the reason
why students passively accept knowledge transmitted from their teachers without
questioning and, in doing so, they are reluctant to express their own ideas as well as

share with others. As such, this implies that the implementation of creating a
collaborative learning environment, shifting the habit of learning from passive to
autonomous, is a major concern and challenge for Vietnamese teachers and suggests
that some caution might be advised in the utilization of alternative strategies.
Over-emphasis on the finished product
Within Vietnamese context, writing has been conducted as an individual
activity with the teacher as the sole audience, and the students are quite quiet (Tran,
2001). From the researcher’s class observations in the last few years of teaching at
the upper-secondary school, communicative approaches are integrated in writing
classes, but that is to say, disappointedly, teachers use them frequently when dealing
with the attendance of other colleagues. They are still in favor of providing
vocabulary and some grammatical structures needed since they perceive that their
students’ language proficiency is rather low and the important thing is to equip them
with knowledge of language forms. Consequently, teachers tend to transmit the
structure drawn from the model text and then ask students to replicate a similar one.
The final products of students sequencing the certain steps following teachers will
be highly evaluated. This causes a limitation of the creativeness in students’ writing
performance since they do nothing but imitate, hopefully getting good marks.
Hence, this pedagogical perception may afford students few opportunities, almost
nothing, to pool their ideas in the writing tasks.
3


Brainstorming and organizing ideas for writing – limited capabilities
What exacerbates the poor quality of writing is the limitation of brainstorming
as well as organizing ideas. With regard to the difficulties students often deal with in
writing, Luu’s study (2012) points out that brainstorming ideas for essay writing is
considered the most difficult by 66,1% of the students and 75% of the teachers at Ho
Chi Minh City University of Finance-Marketing. According to Richard and Renandya
(2002), what makes students find difficult in writing involves generating and

organizing ideas using an appropriate choice of vocabulary and putting such ideas
into an intelligible text. In fact, in pre-stage, students are encouraged to generate their
ideas and determine ideas to make their writing readable. This requires the use of
strategies that students can adopt to ease a sense of frightening to create logically
well-organized ideas of framework prior to writing.
Lacking interests in learning writing
According to Tran (2001, p. 22), Vietnamese students tend to be more
interested in learning other skills and writing seems to be regarded as a chore or a
burden, for a home work exercise is always waiting for them after each writing
lesson. What is worthy of notice is the reason why students feel compelled to writing
instruction. This question is raised, still awaiting for the solutions from scholars and
researchers. But more importantly, teachers should become the ancestors in this long
term project, taking in action to improve students’ interests in learning writing. Pham
(2000) argues that Vietnamese language learners would be disappointed and confused
if the explanation of the vocabulary, and sections on grammatical rules and stylepoints were absent in a writing lesson or an English lesson in general (p. 25). This
might lead to a decrease in showing interests towards learning writing because they
perceive that they do not have enough capability to write down.
Examinations as students’ utmost goal
Although MOET stresses the development of practical communication skills
for students, emphasis is placed on the development of reading comprehension and
the equipment of vocabulary and structural patterns for passing the exams indicating
end-of-school and entrance examinations (Hoang, 2009, p. 16). Additionally,
4


examination formats employing multiple-choice highly value the linguistic forms
and test-oriented skills rather than paying attention to communication skills. In
these tests, students are tested in terms of phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and
reading comprehension. In terms of writing, students are required to fill in the
blanks with suitable words, rewrite some sentences without changing their first

meaning and so on. Not surprisingly then, the pervasive obsessions with error
identification, accuracy and surface-level correctness is still the focus of writing
instruction. Consequently, activeness and creativeness are hindered in a writing
lesson due to the fact that learning writing is of great importance of passing two
exams: General Education Diploma Examination and University Entrance
Examination. These often-accompanying attitudes might be at the bottom of
students’ writing quality failure.
Mismatch between testing and teaching in English language teaching
According to Hoang (2009), one of the remarkable problems in Vietnamese
context is the mismatch between testing and teaching in English language teaching.
As indicated early, writing instruction in Vietnamese classroom is examinationdriven. While MOET highlight the need for teaching communication skills, testing,
paradoxically, seems to concentrate on measuring students’ lexicogrammatical
knowledge. Rather, Warschauer (1999) makes the point that “in the 21st century
educated citizens will need to use English not only for simple communication, but
rather for the kinds of complex negotiation, collaboration, analysis, critique, and
construction of knowledge required by a [transnational] information economy and
society (cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2000). This perception puts an emphasis on the
importance of equipping students with communication skills. Regardless of the
diverse needs for learning English of students, English is a must for international
exchange and better paid employment in the context of integration and
globalization. Besides, Hoang (2009) elaborates that many Vietnamese tertiary
institutions adopted TOEFL or TOEIC or IELTS, which are suitable for studying in
an English-speaking country, as the main yardstick to measure students’ skills and

5


knowledge. This leads to a mismatch in teaching and testing in English language
teaching within Vietnamese context.
It can be assumed that teaching writing is a challenging job, which may call

for relatively longer time to be well-developed than other language skills.
Therefore, creating a learning environment, where exposed to the ideas generation
capabilities and relationship establishing among ideas, creativeness, activeness,
critical thinking and collaboration are referred as some key points in developing
students’ writing quality. In essence, there has been a great body of research on the
effect of concept mapping strategy in education. Concept mapping is assumed to be
an excellent exercise for the promotion of creative thinking and identification of
new problem-solving methods (Cañas et al., 2003). As pre-writing strategy, concept
mapping can be used to activate prior knowledge and to scaffold cognitive
processing by assisting students to see relations among words, ideas, and categories
(Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002). Concept mapping has been recognized as an
effective

method

for

Pittelman, 1986) or

conceptual

presenting

and

and linguistic development (Heimlich &
creating concept

maps

may enhance

students’ recall of vocabulary and expressions (Hall & O’Donnell, 1996).
Studies investigating the effects of concept mapping on academic writing have
shown that students’ essays contained a greater recall of ideas and details (Draheim,
1983; Ruddell & Boyle, 1989), higher level of organization and cohesion
(Kaminski, 1993; Ruddell & Boyle, 1989), increased length (Ruddell & Boyle,
1989), improved holistic scores (Ruddell & Boyle, 1989; Zipprich, 1995) and
improved end-of-grade writing test scores (Pereisich, Meadow & Sinatra, 1990).
A need is felt to find out the strategy that helps students improve their
writing performance, hopefully solving the problems they face with. Therefore,
the main purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using this
writing instruction strategy, namely concept mapping, on improving EFL
learners’ writing skill.

6


1.2. Aim of the study
With the identified problem, this study aims to investigate the perceptions of
learners and teachers towards using concept mapping strategy at pre-writing stage
and examine the effectiveness of concept mapping to writing instruction on EFL
high school students’ writing performance.
1.3. Scope of the study
The study is confined to find out the effectiveness of using concept maps on
improving students’ writing skill. It was conducted with grade 10 at Vinh Dinh
High School in Quang Tri province.
1.4. Significance of the study
It is hoped that the findings from this study is of value in providing students
with a viable strategy to improve their writing ability. By this way, some problems

in EFL writing classes are actually solved; and learning and teaching writing at high
schools, without a shred of doubt, would be improved. Teachers may increase their
students’ confidence in writing by familiarizing them with concept mapping
strategy. Likewise, students would become more aware of their learning process and
maximize their learning by taking advantage of all this learning strategy’s benefits.
1.5. Research questions
(1). What are the perceptions of learners and teachers towards the use of
concept mapping in their EFL writing class?
(2). To what extent does the students’ writing performance develop through
concept mapping strategy?
(3). What recommendations should be made to facilitate students’ writing
performance via concept maps?
1.6. Organization of the thesis
The research proceeds as follows:
Chapter 1 presents the rationale of the study. This chapter also mentions the
research aims and the scope of the study. The significance and the organization of
the study are then introduced.

7


Chapter 2 critically introduces the theoretical background of concept
mapping: concept map definition, the theory pertaining to concept mapping, the
construction, procedures to construct a concept map and some applications of
concept maps. English writing process is also discussed. At the end of chapter,
some previous studies related to the study are reviewed.
Chapter 3 focuses on the research method which describes research design,
the participants, the materials and the instruments for the data collection used in
the study.
Chapter 4 presents the results of the study. Results of participants’ writing

tests regarding five subscales; results of questionnaires, the interviews, and class
observations are yielded to see whether the use of concept maps has a positive
effect on improving students’ writing performance in EFL writing classes.
The last chapter, chapter 5, summarizes the main findings, states the
implication for the findings and makes suggestions for future research directions.

8


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides a theoretical foundation on which this study is grounded.
This chapter is organized into three main sections. The first section begins with a
general discussion of concept mapping, the theory underpinning concept mapping,
procedures to construct a concept map and its application in language learning.
The second section focuses on English writing processes. The linkage between
concept mapping and students’ writing performance via related studies is reviewed
in the last section. The chapter ends with the summary of the literature.
2.1. An overview of Concept mapping
2.1.1. Definition of concept maps and concept mapping
Concept mapping was created as a result of a 12-year longitudinal study by
Novak and his research team at Cornell University in early 1970’s. Concept mapping
is a “graphic representation or picture of one's thoughts, ideas, and attitudes toward a
key concept” (Avery, Baker & Gross, 1997). Chularut and DeBacker (2004) go on
to explicate that concept mapping is “a tool for representing the interrelationships
among concepts in an integrated, hierarchical manner” (p. 249).
It seems that there is not consensus in giving out the definition for concept
maps since each scholar has their own way to build up their set of ideas. Later,
Novak and Cañas (2006) elaborate concept maps as follows:
Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include
concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between

concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to
as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. The
result of linking two concepts is a proposition […] Propositions are statements about some
object or event […] Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking
words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. (p. 1)

Concept mapping is a strategy to represent an individual’s own meaning
making process during learning (Novak, 1998). Novak and Cañas (2006) defines
concept as “perceived regularity (or pattern) in events and objects, or records of
events or objects, designated by a label” (p. 8), and the labels of regularity in events
or objects are seen as words. From the definition aforementioned, it can be deduced
9


that the concept map is a visual representation that shows the meaningful
relationships between concepts in the form of propositions with hierarchical
structure. Concept mapping is perceived as a strategy that helps learners organize
information through visual representation.
2.1.2. The theory pertaining to concept mapping
Concept mapping is derived from Ausubel’s (1968) Assimilation Theory that
puts a logically relative emphasis on meaningful learning. Ausubel (1968) made a
distinction between rote learning and meaningful learning. According to Ausubel, in
meaningful learning, learners choose to integrate in some substantive way new
concepts and propositions with existing relevant ideas in his/ her cognitive structure
(cited in Novak, 2010). This implies that meaningful learning occurs when students
encounter clear, logically organized material and intentionally attempt to integrate
new knowledge with experiences stored in long-term memory. Novak and Cañas
(2006, p. 5) states that while all memory systems are interdependent (and have
information going in both directions), the short-term and “working memory” are
the most critical memory systems for incorporating knowledge into long-term

memory. All incoming information is organized and processed in the working
memory by interaction with knowledge in long-term memory whereas working
memory has a limited capacity and processes only a relatively small number of
concepts. Therefore, concept mapping is believed to facilitate meaningful learning
because it serves as a kind of template or scaffold to help to organize knowledge
and structure it. In this regard, concept mapping can help learners relate new
concepts with prior ones and then organize them hierarchically for a given domain
of knowledge (Novak, 1998). Figure 2.1 illustrates the memory systems of the
human mind and their interactions.

10


Figure 2.1: Key memory system of the brain all interact when we are learning
(Novak & Cañas, 2006)
As such, learners can simplify the complex system of storage by organizing
hierarchically interrelated materials (Pishghadam & Ghanizadeh, 2006). In this
regard, concept maps adequately fulfill the fundamental requirements of meaning
learning aligned with their well-organized knowledge. It is worthy of notice that the
more links and cross-links are created, the greater the depth of understanding
students possess.
A concept map depicts four main cognitive processes - namely subsumption,
progressive differentiation, integrative reconciliation, superordinate learning proposed by Ausubel that help to build a knowledge framework during classroom
learning. Of the four cognitive processes, subsumption is the core principle of
Ausubel’s theory, in which learners link new knowledge or concepts that are more
specific to a more general concept. Superordinate learning refers to the relation with
specific subordinate ideas in the existing cognitive structure. Progressive
differentiation implies that learning, retention and organization of knowledge is
hierarchical fashion. Integrative reconciliation occurs when there arises some
similarities or differences between related concepts in diverse domains (Kharatmal,

2009).
Numerous mapping systems have been developed to refer to the graphic
representation of knowledge structure, e.g., concept maps (Novak & Gowin, 1984),
semantic maps (Lambiotte, Dansereau, Cross, & Reynolds, 1989), mind maps
(Buzan, 1974), spider maps (Fisher, 1990) and webs (Tarquin & Walker, 1997). The
11


distinction between these terms is not clear in literature (Ojima, 2006). However, in
this study, concept mapping has some distinctive features that make it unique from
others: (1) the theoretical basis in Ausubel’s Assimilation Learning theory, (2) their
semi-hierarchical organization, (3) the use of unconstrained and meaningful linking
phrases, (4) the ways concepts are defined (Canas et al., 2003, p. 13). Needless to
say, mastering the construction of concept maps is of paramount importance to
appropriately apply this technique to instruction.
2.1.3. The construction of concept maps
In constructing a concept map, concept words or phrases are referred to as
nodes placed in boxes or circles. The concepts are single words or short phrases
rather than sentences. Linking lines are used to connect nodes that are related. They
can be in the form of straight lines, line with or without arrows, lines with
explanatory text and even curved lines. A labeled line is a linking line with linking
words on it. A proposition, then, is defined as a meaningful statement composing of
two or more concept nodes with labeled lines. Concept-link-concept triples form
meaningful propositions. Figure 2 shows the form of a proposition.

Figure 2.2: Concept map notation (Cho, Yi, & Jackson, 2012)
Linking words or linking phrases specify the relationship between two
concepts and are used to form meaningful propositions. Examples of linking words
can be known as “contains”, “occurs in”, “is”, “uses”, “have”, “involved in”, etc.
(Noyd, 1998). Another characteristic of concept maps is that concepts are

represented in a hierarchical structure with the most general concepts at the top of
the map and the less general concept arranged below (Novak, 1976; Novak &
Gowin, 1984, cited in Cañas et al., 2003).
An important characteristic of concept maps is the inclusion of cross-links. They
aim to show interrelationships between ideas in different map segments and help
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learners “see how a concept in one domain of knowledge is related to a concept in
another domain represented on the map” and “represents creative leaps” of the map
creator in his or her new knowledge development process (Novak & Cañas, 2006).
Figure 2.3 illustrates the concept map about “concept maps”. An example in Figure 2.3
is the proposition “cross-links show interrelationships” which is cross-linked to the
proposition “creativity is needed to see interrelationships”. The figure shows that the
domain is concept map; key concepts are “organized knowledge”, “focus questions”,
“concepts”, “propositions”; linking words are “represent”, “is”, “begin with”,
“include”, for instance; propositions are “concepts are hierarchy structured”, “concepts
are labeled”, for example. In general, the greater the number of valid links between
concepts, the more sophisticated the map is considered to be (Novak & Gowin, 1984).

Figure 2.3: Concept Map about Concept Maps by Novak (Cañas et al., 2003)
A feature that may be added to the construction of concept maps is that
concepts are usually represented in a hierarchical manner with the most general
concepts arranged at the top of the map and the more specific, less general concepts
distributed beneath. In practice, concept maps, however, may not regulate in a strict
hierarchy, but are arranged in a semi-hierarchical manner, even allowing the nonhierarchical relationships and cross-links (Cañas et al., 2003).
In addition, parking lot is referred to as a list of concepts awaiting to be
added to a concept map. A good way to define the context for a concept map is to
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construct a focus question specifying the problems or issues that the concept map
should help to resolve.
A final aspect in the construction of a concept map is the involvement of
specific examples of events or objects that help to clarify the meaning of a given
concept and, normally, are not included in the ovals or boxes. Therefore, unlike
concepts, examples are not enclosed in a box, circles, oval, or other shapes (e.g.
Bolte, 1999; Dabbagh, 2001; Novak, 1998; Novak & Cañas, 2006; Novak &
Gowin, 1984).
Owing to the massive popularity of technology, computer-based concept
mapping is on-going fashion. A rewarding aspect of computer-based concept
mapping is that it promotes the ease of making corrections, tracking learners’
concept mapping processes, the interaction between instructors and students and the
flexibility of content representation (Liu, Chen & Chang, 2010; Shin, Deno,
Robinson, & Marston, 2000). Therefore, computer-based concept mapping can be
recommended as means of facilitating knowledge acquisition as well as language
skills. Below is a computer-based concept map created by the students in the
experimental treatment in Unit 13 in which the students had to write about dolphins.

Figure 2.4: A student-generated computer-based concept map – Unit 13: Dolphins
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