Copy of LUẬN VĂN.Nguyen thi my trang-K19A2

HANOI UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYEN THI MY TRANG

THE EFFECTS OF CONCEPT MAPPING STRATEGY
ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’
ESP READING COMPREHENSION
AT UNIVERSITY OF TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements
Of the degree of master in tesol

SUPERVISOR: HOANG VAN HOAT, M.A.

Hanoi, 2013


TABLE OF CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

Secondly, I would acknowledge my great gratitude to Ms. Nguyen Thai Ha, M.A., the
lecturer of Research Methods for her willing support, guidance, and invaluable
knowledge for research theoretically. With her wholehearted assistance, I can now not
only know how to search for and read needed materials, journals effectively, but can
also take the basic steps in doing research.
Thirdly, I am very thankful to all other lecturers and organizers at Department of
Postgraduate Studies – Hanoi University for their providing me with useful
knowledge during the Master course.
My special thanks also go to the students of class 62CCKT05 and 62CCKT07 of the
Department of Economics at University of Transport Technology (UTT) for their
willingness to take part in the study. Without their help, this research could not have
been so successful.
I am additionally in deeply indebted to my friends, my classmates, and my colleagues
as well for their useful help, comments, and criticism.
Last but not least, I would like to send my heart-felt gratitude to my family who have
constantly inspired and encouraged me throughout the study.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CM

: Concept mapping

CMs

: Concept maps

E1

: The first English subject at UTT

E2

: The second English subject at UTT

E3

: The third English subject at UTT

E4

: The fourth English subject at UTT

EFL

: English as a foreign language

ESL

: English as a second language

ESP

: English for Special Purpose

GE

: General English

L1

: First Language

L2

: Second Language

M

: Mean

p

: probability value

SD

: Standard Deviation

SLA

: Second Language Acquisition

SPSS

: Statistical Package for Social Sciences

UTT

: University of Transport Technology

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LIST OF TABLES

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LIST OF FIGURES

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ABSTRACT

In an attempt to improve non-English major students’ ESP reading comprehension
skills at the University of Transport Technology (UTT), the research aims at
investigating the effects of concept mapping (CM) strategy on non-English major
students’ ESP reading comprehension as well as the students’ attitudes towards the
CM. To find the answers to these questions, an experimental design was chosen to
carry out the study. The subjects of the study were 81 students, including 62 females
and 19 males. They were all the second year non-English major students, specializing

in Accounting and their level of English proficiency was high elementary. To ensure
that differences in the results of the study were due to the difference in the treatment,
the researcher chose two intact classes as participants of the study due to the results of
the last GE achievement exam (E3 achievement exam) in January, 2013 on schedule
and the researcher’s knowledge about these two classes while teaching them E3 in the
first semester of the second year. The experimental group was taught using CM
strategy in reading comprehension lessons while the control group was taught by “the
traditional way”. The data of the study were collected by means of an ESP reading
comprehension test and an attitude questionnaire. The data collected from the ESP
reading comprehension test results were computed and analyzed by means of t-tests,
using paired-samples t-tests with SPSS version 16.0 to measure the students’ ESP
reading comprehension proficiency before and after the experiment. The data
collected from the questionnaire were converted into percentage to investigate
students’ attitudes towards CM strategy.
The results of the study revealed that students’ ESP reading comprehension
proficiency increased significantly when CM strategy was applied. Moreover, the
findings of the research showed that students had positive attitudes towards the use of
CM strategy in ESP lessons. Therefore, the study concludes that CM strategy may
contribute to the students’ ESP reading comprehension ability and recommends that
CM strategy should be applied in teaching reading ESP.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The current study is intended to investigate the effects of CM strategy on ESP reading
comprehension of non-English major students at UTT. It begins with this introductory
chapter, which describes the background to the study and indicates the aims and research
questions. It also discusses the scope, the significance of the study and provides the
organization of the thesis.
1.1. Background to the study
As studies indicate that the ability to read and to comprehend is considered one of the most
important and basic skills for a person to learn and educate. Research findings in applied
linguistics and reading research consistently show a strong correlation between reading
proficiency and academic success at all ages (Pretorius, 2000). Thus, it can be said that
without reading comprehension skills, readers cannot gather any information and use it to
efficiently function and enjoy the richness of life.
At UTT, after finishing 180 periods (each lasts 45 minutes) of GE program, of which 120
periods are spent on the course-book “New English File” - Elementary (Oxenden, LathamKoenig, & Seligson, 2004) and divided equally into two subjects named E1 and E2 in the
first and second semester of the first academic year, and the rest 60 periods is for another
subject called E3 covering the first five units in “New English File”– Pre-intermediate in
the first semester of the second year, students have to take an ESP course (called E4) in the
second semester of the second year. In the ESP courses, English learning focuses mainly
on reading, so does English for Economics. English for Economics compiled by teachers of
English from the English Division – UTT includes 10 units which are taught in 60 periods
with an aim to provide students vocabulary, terms related to economics, reading skills as
well as some basic grammatical structures so that after the course, students will be able to
comprehend and utilize a certain number of economic terms, comprehend, analyze, and
translate English materials, books, and magazines in Economic field (Curriculum
specifications: English for Economics, 2009, UTT). Finishing this course, students are
assessed through a written exam with a focus on examining ESP reading comprehension


performance, specialty words, terms, including specialty knowledge of students in English.

Therefore, reading, especially reading comprehension obviously plays an important role
for students at Economics Department in particular and for all students in ESP classes at
UTT in general.
However, there is a fact that after finishing 180 periods of GE program at UTT, the
students still possess inadequate reading comprehension skills, which is a big constraint for
them to follow ESP courses. Due to this problem, many of them lose their interest in
reading ESP texts (To Van Hoa, 2008) and this could lead to the students’ failure in
previous ESP courses.
As observed and discussed, the researcher knows that there are two main causes to this
problem: uninteresting, inappropriate current teaching method and the difference between
GE and ESP. In fact, although UTT teachers of English still follow three stages: Pre-,
While-, and Post-reading in ESP reading lessons, it seems to be ineffective and challenging
for students to get the requirements of a reading text. Specifically, in Pre-reading stage,
teachers usually try to elicit students’ prior knowledge related to the topic by asking them
some questions. However, it is obvious that students have difficulty in answering or
expressing what they want to say in English although they have learned the subject
knowledge in Vietnamese. As a result, they always answer the teacher’s questions in
Vietnamese which is meaningless in ESP reading lessons. In While- reading stage, teachers
usually ask students to read the text individually in silence or aloud before doing the
follow-up reading comprehension exercises. The lessons are often ended by a summary of
the text and then a translation of the passage into Vietnamese but once again the students
have difficulty in summarizing the text because they cannot organize and connect the ideas
in such a long text as ESP texts. The pedagogical results of this approach are that the
lessons become boring; students do not have effective reading strategies. In fact, when
being asked about what reading strategies they usually use, most of them express that they
try to read and comprehend the reading texts word by word; some say that they usually
translate the texts into Vietnamese while reading, others pay too much attention to
vocabulary, few get the gist of the passage by skimming and no one scans to get the needed
information or finds the key words. As a result, they read slowly, read without
understanding accordingly as their memory is taxed by the inability to retain information in

sufficiently large chunks to progress through a text (Bell, 2001), especially long texts in
English for Economics.
Moreover, the difference between GE and ESP is another difficulty for students to follow
an ESP course. Texts in GE refer to such various topics as music, food, sports, everyday
communication… whereas texts in ESP are more specific and even longer with a lot of
specialty vocabulary, even some words which are familiar to students in GE but are not
fully explicable in ESP reading. In addition, the way in which language is used in an ESP
text is not the same as in a GE text (Dudley Evans & St. John, 1998). For this reason, ESP
reading is, of course, more complicated, difficult, and boring than GE reading. Take
English for Economics at UTT as an example, all the texts are economics based and
informative. With the average length of about from 250 to 400 words even more, each text
consists of about 15 to 20 new words, most of which are specialized terms or concepts and
have different meanings from those in GE like ‘exchange rate, full employment, fiscal
policy, balance of payment, interest rate…’ What is more, about 25 to 35 compound and
complex sentences exist in each text. This is the reason why understanding an ESP text
fully is really challenging for students at high elementary.
Being aware of the current problem posed to the students in ESP classes at UTT, there
needs to be a call for a new teaching method, a more appropriate reading strategy provided
for the students in order to help them improve their ESP reading comprehension
performance not only to do well in ESP final exams but also to use it effectively in
workplaces after graduation. Studies indicate that proficient comprehension requires
identifying the main ideas and making connections between relevant information.
Knowledge of the textual clues indicating important ideas or phrases, and how these ideas
connect to supporting details helps readers comprehend more efficiently. This allows
readers to create a macrostructure of what they are reading and they remember that, rather
than the entire text (Berkowitz, 1986). This practice helps readers to engage in high levelthinking about what they are reading. Therefore, after considering various reading
strategies, the researcher was encouraged by the related studies indicating that CM strategy
can fulfill these requirements because of its benefits (see 2.3.2). With its benefits, the

researcher had come to an assumption that it might help minimize the main causes to the
problem mentioned above. Therefore, the researcher planned to do an experimental study


on the topic to get a better understanding about CM strategy and its effects on the students’
ESP reading comprehension improvement with the hope that this strategy can effectively
replace the traditional one.
1.2. Aims and research questions
This study aims at investigating whether CM strategy is more effective than the current
teaching method at UTT in improving students’ ESP reading comprehension. Moreover,
the students’ attitudes towards CM strategy are also examined. Therefore, in order to meet
these requirements, the study aims at answering the following research questions:
1. To what extent does CM strategy improve non-English major students’ ESP
reading comprehension?
2. What are the students’ attitudes towards CM strategy?
1.3. Scope of the study
Students’ low reading comprehension ability of ESP materials is a mutual concern among
teachers of English at UTT. Research has pointed out the significance and the effectiveness
of CM strategy on students’ reading comprehension. In fact, a lot of CM techniques are
suggested and the value of such techniques is frequently stressed, particularly in L2
settings. However, due to the time constraint, the researcher decided to carry out the
experiment on the application of two CM techniques including Map-correction technique
and Fill-in-map CM technique with the participation of 81 non – English major students at
UTT in ten weeks.
1.4. Significance of the study
Reading comprehension has been a concern of each classroom teacher, especially ESP
teacher in institutions where ESP syllabuses mainly focus on reading and comprehending
specialist materials like at UTT. Therefore, searching for what strategies work in helping
students to build reading comprehension skills is imperative so that students can have
every opportunity to experience success. With the aim to investigate the effects of a

reading strategy - CM strategy - on the improvement of ESP reading comprehension
proficiency and their attitudes towards the given reading strategy, the findings of the study
will hopefully bring teachers of English in general and the teachers of English at UTT in


particular more practical ideas on the role of CM strategy as well as the way to apply it in
language learning, especially in the teaching of ESP reading so as to make it more
effective. It is also hoped that through the application of CM in Pre-reading, Whilereading, and Post-reading stages in ESP classes, the study will help shift the ESP classes
from teacher-centered to learner-centered and learning centered.
1.5. Organization of the thesis
Besides references and appendixes, the thesis consists of five chapters, organized as
follows:
Chapter I – Introduction – provides the information about the background to the study,
the aims and research questions, scope of the study, as well as the significance and the
organization of the thesis.
Chapter II – Literature review – provides the theoretical background of reading, reading
comprehension, CM strategy, and the relationship between CM and reading
comprehension. This part also presents the previous studies related to the CM strategy on
reading comprehension improvement.
Chapter III – Methodology – describes the research method chosen for the study, which
involves the five basic components of the experiment: variables, subjects, data collection
instruments, data analysis, and procedures.
Chapter IV – The results and discussions – includes the presentation, analysis of the data
collected from the tests and questionnaire, and discussions of the findings on the effects of
CM strategy on students’ ESP reading comprehension and their attitudes to applying CM
strategy in ESP lessons.
Chapter V – Conclusions and recommendations – summarizes the findings of the study
and draws some conclusions from the findings. It then presents some pedagogical
implications, some limitations of the study. It ends with some recommendations for further
research.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents a brief review of the literature relevant to the study. It consists of two
sections. The first section deals with the theoretical background of (1) reading including
definition of reading, ESP reading, reading strategies, principles of effective reading
instruction and stages of a reading lesson; (2) reading comprehension comprised of
definition of reading comprehension and factors affecting reading comprehension; and (3)
CM strategy covered with definition of CM, benefits of CM, steps in constructing a
concept map, CM techniques used in previous research and in the current study. The
second section focuses on the previous research.
2.1. Reading
This section is to supply readers with definition of reading, ESP reading, reading strategies,
principles of effective reading instruction, and stages of a reading lesson.
2.1.1. Definition of reading
In recent decades, reading has become one of important and essential parts in language
teaching and learning. The meaning of “Reading” has been given in various ways.
Ur defines "reading means reading and understanding" (Ur, 1996, p.138) while Harmer
(2001) defines reading as an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes
receive messages, then the brain has to work out the significance of these messages.
Anderson (1999) explains reading is an active, fluent process involving the readers and the
reading material in building meaning. According to him, meaning does not reside on the
printed page, it combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s background
knowledge and experiences.
All in all, what all the linguists have in common is that reading involves a variety of skills
and reading usually means comprehending written language so when understanding breaks
down, reading actually does not occur. Reading is the process which involves the surface
representation encoded by a writer and ends with interpretation of the written text and
interchanges between the writer and the reader. The reader utilizes all resources to

construct meaning. So, teachers must view the text, in conjunction with students’ prior
knowledge, student strategies, the task and the classroom situation as a whole to achieve
comprehension.
To sum up, once again, reading is a complex process that is affected by many factors. So,
if a reader is totally unfamiliar with a text, they will fail to understand it. Therefore, as far
as the author knows, teachers must find out the appropriate reading strategies applied in
ESP reading lessons as a scaffolding so as to help students create a macrostructure of what
they are reading and they remember that, rather than the entire text and to easily elicit
students’ background knowledge prior to reading, promote their motivation.
2.1.2. ESP reading
As stated in 1.1, ESP has been seen different from GE. GE is aimed to teach general
language proficiency while ESP is an approach to language teaching in which the contents
and the goals of an ESP course are fixed by the specific needs of a particular group of
learners (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). A text in GE refers to different spheres of life:
culture, literature, everyday communication… but a text in ESP is used for specific
purposes such as: science and technology, economics... For this reason, ESP reading is of
course more complicated, difficult, and boring than GE reading. There are a lot of
specialized terms which are not easy for students to understand. Besides, some words
which are familiar to students in GE but are not fully explicable in ESP reading, which
leads to difficulty in understanding an ESP text. Therefore, students cannot understand an
ESP text fully in terms of the statements and explanations found in traditional grammars or
modern linguistic descriptions but they can only understand it after paying attention to the
purpose of the text and the structure and function of its various components.
Understanding the difference between ESP and GE reading, the researcher hopes to find a
suitable method of teaching and learning reading ESP and looking at such components as
reading activities, reading skills, and especially reading strategies involved in reading.
2.1.3. Reading Strategies
This part provides readers with definition and the role of reading strategies

2.1.3.1. Definition of Reading Strategies
Reading strategies are not only for how related the use of strategies to effective reading
comprehension but also for what to reveal about the ways readers manage their interactions
with written texts.
In terms of reading strategies, understanding what they are is necessary. Brown (2001)
defines reading strategies as specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of
operation for achieving a particular end, or planned designs for controlling and
manipulating certain information. Brantmeier (as cited in Phan Ngan, 2006) states that
reading strategies may involve skimming, scanning, guessing, recognizing cognates and
word families, reading for meaning, predicting, activating general knowledge, making
inferences, following references, and separating main ideas from supporting ideas.
To support the definitions above, Baker and Boonkit (2004) also defines them as
techniques and methods that readers use to make their reading successful. Some of reading
strategies include skimming, scanning, summarizing, guessing, predicting, making
inference, underlying words or phrases, and taking note.
All in all, it can be concluded that reading strategies are tools to make reading successful.
In other words, reading strategies help readers comprehend what the reading text is about.
2.1.3.2. Role of Reading Strategies
Reading strategies play a very important role in reading comprehension especially when
learners become centered in teaching and learning process now.
Numerous studies on reading strategies assure that reading strategies can facilitate
students’ reading comprehension. Wong (2010) states that good readers are able to use
more and diverse reading strategies to achieve success in reading while poor readers lack
the development of reading strategies. In other words, the reading performance of the
students who use reading strategies is better than that of those who do not receive such
training.
Furthermore, researchers also believe that the effective use of reading strategies also
promotes learners’ autonomy and creates independent readers as it enables learners to self-

direct their individual reading processes (Allen, 2003). This means that readers need to
have appropriate reading strategies to control their reading comprehension and to shift
goals for reading.
To sum up, reading strategies are comprehension processes that enable readers to construct
meaning from the text most effectively. They show how readers tackle a reading task, how
they interpret their reading and what they do when they do not comprehend. It can, thus, be
said that reading strategies are really essential in promoting students’ reading
comprehension. Once they are identified, the learners will know why they are poor readers
and the teachers can decide what they should do to help their learners improve their
reading comprehension.
2.1.4. Principles of effective reading instruction
To help ESL/EFL students become strategic and independent readers is the goal of
teaching reading. According to Nunan (2000), reading is usually misconceived as a solitary
activity in which the reader interacts with the text in isolation. In fact, reading is a complex
process, especially in a L2/FL because readers need to construct meaning through
culturally determined cognitive frameworks. Reading is now seen as communication, a
manipulation of strategies, a receptive rather than a passive skill. From the research into
effective L2 reading teachers, Richards (1989) has concluded nine principles of effective
reading instruction:
(1) Instructional objectives are used to guide and organize the lessons.
(2) The teacher has a comprehensive theory of the nature of reading on a L2.
(3) Class-time is used for learning, which means students are “on task” for fifty of the
sixty minutes.
(4) Instructional activities have a teaching rather than a testing focus. The teacher
provides opportunities for learners to develop and improve skills and strategies
rather than demonstrating mastery of such skills.
(5) Lessons have a clear structure. The structure is outlined to students, and each
activity must be clearly framed.

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


(7) Classroom activities give students opportunities to get feedback on their reading
performance. The teacher provides information on the kinds of strategies used for
different tasks, and on the effectiveness of these strategies.
(8) Instructional activities relate to real-world reading purposes.
(9) Instruction is learner focused. Learners are encouraged to try and work things out
for themselves.
From Richard’s principles of effective reading instruction, teaching reading must be
learner-centered, which requires teachers to design a variety of reading activities in order
to motivate students to be “on-task” almost all the time.
Traditionally, attempts to improve the comprehension of texts for EFL students have
focused on familiarizing the student with the vocabulary needed to comprehend the
passage. However, such instruction is unlikely to raise the students’ interest in reading the
text or to prepare them for the culturally and conceptually novel elements of the text.
Studies on CM strategy, a learner-centered approach as Khajavi & Ketabi (2012) state,
have demonstrated their facilitative effectiveness on helping students identify the main
ideas, activating readers’ prior knowledge relevant to the new text, making the reading task
easier and more enjoyable, bringing about meaningful learning …, which helps students
comprehend more efficiently (see more at 2.3.2).
2.1.5. Stages of a reading lesson
Contemporary reading tasks helping to develop reading ability, unlike the traditional
materials, involve a three-phase procedure: Pre-, While-, and Post-reading stages
(Williams, 1984). It is affirmed that all three stages are very important in teaching reading,
and they are related to one another. Also, each of these stages carries its own features and
purposes and requires different techniques and strategies.
2.1.5.1. Pre-reading
Lee and Vanpatten (1995) state that L2 learners need help bring their knowledge to bear on
the process of comprehension. Therefore, the initial phase of the instructional framework

must activate learners’ background knowledge. Varaprasad (1997) claims that the prereading stage attempts to improve students' interest in the topic and motivate them; to


provide some predicting/guessing activities for the reading passage; to make use of
students’ background knowledge about the topic, to prepare the students for the context of
the reading passage; to build a bridge between the reading passage and the learners’
background knowledge. Ur (1996) also agrees that activating readers’ prior knowledge of a
topic before they begin to read may help students’ comprehension. He argues that tasks
make the activity more interesting since readers have a purpose in reading and also the
reading teacher may see how well the text is understood with the help of tasks given before
and after reading.
To sum up, the pre-reading stage helps to make the next stages of reading more easily
adaptable for the reader. As the reader progresses along the necessary reading stages, more
skills begin to develop. Therefore, this stage is very important to orient students to any
new material they do not know, to activate schema for previous knowledge of a topic, and
to help motivate students. Also, without the pre-reading stage, the task (while-reading)
might be more difficult and progressively less enjoyable. As a result, the reader may
struggle and may withdraw from reading.
In English classes, especially in ESP classes, usually students read a text not because they
want to but because their teacher tells them to, or simply because it is there. So, in order to
motivate them to read, it is important to give them the purposes for reading and scaffolding
activities so that their prior knowledge can easily be activated. It is affirmed that CM
techniques (Fill-in-map and Map- correction) can do this task well.
2.1.5.2. While-reading
According to Williams (1984), While-reading stage is the main part of a reading lesson
with specific aims including: to help students’ understanding of the writer’s purpose; to
help students’ understanding of the text structure; to clarify text content. Richards (1990)
considers reading as an integration of top-down processes utilizing background knowledge
and schema and bottom-up processes that are primarily text or data driven. In this case,
students should be encouraged and stimulated to use both of the two processes, top-down

and bottom-up when actually tackling any reading text. The students, on one hand, might
be asked to treat the text as a whole to get the general picture without being too concerned
with the details, i.e., skimming the text to pick out main points rapidly. On the other hand,


they might be asked to look at a text and extract specific information, i.e., scanning the text
to find out a fact that they are interested in or asked for. Thus, whether one skims or scans,
it depends on the purposes of the reader.
Therefore, during this stage, CM techniques can be applied to help facilitate students to
skim for the main idea, scan for the secondary categories, or read intensively for the
supporting ideas. It is believed that this strategy might be useful to intervene in the reading
process in some way, making learners to be more active as they read and thus it might help
to encourage critical thinking and increase students’ comprehension and easy retention in
ESP lessons.
2.1.5.3. Post-reading
The post-reading stage is the final but not the less important stage of a reading lesson
because it is time for students to apply what they have got from the text into real life
communication. According to Chastain (1988), post-reading activities help readers to
clarify any unclear meaning where the focus is on the meaning not on the grammatical or
lexical aspects of the text. Ur (1996) discusses summary as a kind of post-reading activity
where the readers are asked to summarize the content in one or two sentences. Karakas
(2002) proposes that the readers interpret the text and illustrate the relationship between
the questions and answers and draw conclusions and it is possible to catch the missing
parts of the mental picture through thinking aloud, discussion and summarizing.
In summary, each of the three reading stages carries its own aims and activities. It is very
effective if these three stages are combined flexibly and appropriately for an efficient ESP
reading lesson in general so that students can easily understand an ESP reading text.
2.2. Reading comprehension
This section aims to provide readers with not only definition of reading comprehension but
also factors affecting reading comprehension.

2.2.1. Definition of reading comprehension
There is a great deal of research that stresses the importance of comprehension in reading.
Thus, it is necessary to understand the nature of reading comprehension. There are
different definitions of reading comprehension.
According to Grellet (1981, p.3), “Reading comprehension or understanding a written text
means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.” The author
means that reading comprehension is an activity which aims at decoding the meaning of
word combination in the text in the most efficient way and students can show their
understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways such as summarizing
the text, answering questions etc. Therefore, it is not enough in the context of this study.
Clement (1991, p.43) considers “comprehension is building bridges between the new and
the known”, which means reading comprehension is the process of relating the new
information on the printed page to the information already stored in memory, i.e., the
reader’s existing knowledge. The printed page guides comprehension but it is not
comprehension. The readers read the text and search for its meaning. As readers interact
with the text, their own background knowledge facilitates comprehension. Obviously, this
definition fails to help readers get the whole meaning of reading comprehension since it
only mentions the combination of the prior knowledge with the new one.
Given the fact that there is hardly any definition that can work in all contexts, it is
necessary to give out a working definition for this study. Considering some definitions and
the context of the study, our working definition is that reading comprehension is the
process of decoding language to thought or working out the meaning of a reading text. İn
this process, the reader has to make an effort to extract the required information from the
printed text as efficiently as possible. This means the reader has to employ the various
ways to facilitate the understanding of the text. Reading comprehension is not only a
function of the interplay between language and what the brain does with it, it also requires
the activation of contextual information and previous knowledge. Consequently, reading
comprehension is like the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning

through interaction and involvement with written language through which readers can reexpressing the content of the text by summarizing the text, answering questions etc….


In conclusion, reading comprehension, primary purpose for reading, is a process of
understanding what is conveyed in the text. It does not mean that the reader needs to
understand every single word in the text but actively work on the text and extract the
required information efficiently. Fluent reading involves both decoding and interpretation
skills; and raising students' awareness of main ideas in a text and exploring the
organization of a text are essential for good comprehension.
2.2.2. Factors affecting reading comprehension
Looking closely at factors affecting the extent to which learners comprehend a reading
lesson and obtaining the best achievement in second language acquisition (SLA) is very
essential. Oxford (1990) presents a variety of factors influencing reading comprehension.
However, only some of the factors that directly affect the way the students at UTT learn
reading ESP are mentioned in the following sections. They are background knowledge,
teacher’s teaching methods, learning strategies, material, motivation, and vocabulary.
2.2.2.1. Background knowledge
Background knowledge has a significant effect on the readers’ comprehension. It can
ensure the success in reading for the reader if he possesses it, but it may also lead to failure
in comprehending a reading passage if the reader lacks it.
According to schema theory, reading comprehension is closely related to the readers’ prior
knowledge and experience. Afflerbach (1990) suggests that readers with more prior
knowledge are more likely to construct the main idea automatically. In other words, the
prior knowledge of the content domain helps the readers anticipate the meaning of a text.
According to schemata theory, certain cues in the text activate the reader’s schemata which
allow the reader to generate hypotheses about the content and structure of the text. The
reader may draft and store a main idea statement about the unfamiliar text and then return
to the text for more information to revise the statement. The readers without adequate
background knowledge find out that the task of main idea construction is more difficult.
Therefore, the readers should activate background knowledge to compensate for the

limited resources of working memory.


All in all, it cannot be denied that background knowledge is the key to understanding of a
language. It is one of the most important factors contributing to the success of a reader. In
fact, comprehension will be very difficult or impossible if the readers have a lack of
knowledge about the topic of the reading passage because readers cannot decode or
comprehend what they are to read. It is true to say that providing sufficient background
knowledge to students before getting them to read the text is very necessary. Lack of
background knowledge can significantly impair comprehension, sufficient prior knowledge
can increase comprehension, and comprehension can be facilitated by using case-based
instruction, that is, employing thematic organizers and hierarchical CM in reading
(Alvarez, 1990). In UTT context, although students have finished the basic specialist
subjects related to ESP, in fact, they still have difficulty in expressing their prior specialist
knowledge in English when studying ESP. In this case, CM strategy seems to be the useful
framework for them to easily activate their prior knowledge.
2.2.2.2. Motivation
According to Richards (1992), motivation is the factor that determines a person’s desire to
do something. In second language, different types of motivation may affect learning
differently. Harmer (2001) says that the motivation that students bring to class is the
biggest single factor affecting their success. Causes for incomprehension are that poor
motivation leads to a lack of experience or inadequate prior knowledge and a limited or
subjective view of what is read. Students are lowly motivated in reading when they are
unable to use the language in meaningful situations. Novak (1998) contends that CMs
adequately fulfill the fundamental requirements of meaningful learning; therefore, using
CM strategy as scaffolding may facilitate learning as well as increase students’ motivation
for reading
2.2.2.3. Learning strategies
From the cognitive view, reading comprehension, which is the construction of meaning
from a printed or written message, is a conversation between the reader and the author, and

thus the widely accepted models of fluent reading is an interactive one in which a variety
of processes interact with text features. Learning strategies are important and should be
paid attention to a lot because they are one of the major applications of cognitive theory.


Oxford (1990) claims that learning strategies are behaviors or actions which learners use to
make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable.
According to the concept of cognitive learning, meaningful learning takes place when a
student consciously chooses to learn in a meaningful way. If a student chooses to learn by
rote, information is processed in an arbitrary and less substantive manner (Novak &
Gowin, 1984). As a result, information is less linked to the existing knowledge and the
forgetting rate is rapid.
Based on this notion, Novak & Gowin (1984) suggest that the facilitative effect of CM
strategy in their study was partly due to the use of the strategy of assisting and forcing
learners to adopt a meaningful learning set by integrating the new knowledge with the
existing knowledge framework, and partly because of CM strategy’s providing a review of
the key vocabulary.
In conclusion, a good reader is the one who knows how to apply appropriate reading
strategies while reading. As Hosenfield (1977) identifies a good reader as the one who tries
to keep the meaning of the passage in mind, reads in chunks, ignores less important words,
tries to guess the meanings of unknown words using contextual clues, and has a good
concept of himself as a reader. In this case, researchers have agreed that employing CM
strategy can make students acquire the strategies and the process used by good readers.
2.2.2.4. Materials
According to White (1988), materials are considered to be one of the kernel elements in the
model of language teaching and learning. Its objectives are to develop English language
skills, students’ understanding and help students become autonomous learners.
Because of this, appropriate reading materials must effectively assist students in
developing reading skills. It is necessary for teachers to design or select suitable reading
texts and materials, especially, ESP materials with relevant exercises for students’

proficiency. As Blau (2000) implies that the high-interest topic and thematically linked
reading effectively build students’ background knowledge and vocabulary for later
reading.


The use of authentic texts is now considered to be one way of maintaining and increasing
students’ motivation for learning. They give the learners the feeling that he or she is
learning the ‘real’ language (Guariento & Morley, 2001). However, the use of authentic
texts may not only prevent the learners from responding in meaningful ways but also lead
them to feel frustrated, confused, and more importantly demotivated. Therefore, teachers
have to simplify authentic texts like ESP materials without losing their authenticity so that
students can get accustomed to authentic texts and easily understand them and it is said
that applying CM strategy in ESP classes may help to do so because it helps students
extract the information they need from the difficult authentic texts and provides
meaningful learning.
In summary, factors mentioned above have been confirmed to have influence on learners’
reading comprehension in prior research. It is likely that these factors will affect the
reading comprehension of two groups of students: the Experiment and Control group in the
current study.
2.3. Concept mapping
The aim of this section is to provide readers with theoretical knowledge related to CM
strategy, including definitions of CM and CMs, benefits that CM brings about to reading
comprehension, steps in constructing a concept map, types of CM technique versions used
in previous research, the CM techniques used in this study and the reasons for this choice.
The last part of this section presents some related previous studies.
2.3.1. Definition of concept maps and concept mapping
Many researchers have tried to give out the definitions of CMs and CM. According to
Novak & Gowin (1984), CMs are diagrams which represent organized knowledge while
CM is described by Lanzing (1996) as a technique that can demonstrate how people
visualize relationships between various concepts. Chularut & Debacker (2004, p.248)

define CM as “a tool for representing interrelationships among concepts in an integrated,
hierarchical manner.” In the latest introduction and instructions of the Novakian types of
CMs, Novak & Cañas (2008) define that CMs are graphical tools for organizing and
representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of