Using mind mapping techniques to develop Ly Thuong Kiet high school 11th grade students’ reading text summary skills Nguyễn Thị Thúy Vân Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English teaching methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10 Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Đỗ Bá Quý Năm bảo vệ: 2012 Abstract. This study was done aiming at finding out the more useful teaching methods for improving students’ reading text summary skills, testing the effectiveness of using mind-mapping techniques to develop 11th grade students’ reading text summary skills compared to conventional techniques and investigating the experimental students’ attitudes towards teaching reading text summary through using mind mapping techniques. In order to meet the aim of the study, a quasi-experimental research was conducted in two intact 11th grade classes at Ly Thuong Kiet high school in Hai Phong. Participants were 80 students (40 students for each class) from class 11B10 and 11B11, 11B10 was labeled the experimental class and 11B11 was the control class. The pretest and posttest scores were used to measure both classes’ reading text summary competence before and after the treatment during ten weeks of the second semester of the 2011-2012 academic school year. And then the post program questionnaire was designed to get more feedback from experimental students. The results of the pretest and posttest scores between the two classes were drawn via the descriptive statistics for Microsoft Excel and the data from questionnaires with 40 experimental students were then synthesized and analyzed. The findings of the study showed that using mind- mapping in the post reading stage improved students’ reading text summary skills. On this basis, the study recommended some directions for further studies on the similar issues with reference to the context of high school in Vietnam. Keywords. Tiếng Anh; Phương pháp giảng dạy; Bài đọc; Lớp 11; Phổ thông trung học; Biểu đồ tư duy Content 1. Rationale for the study Nowadays, English is a compulsory subject in the school curriculum in Vietnam, and the teaching and learning of that international language has been recently paid great attention to. Together with teachers’ help and guidance, students have to try their best to master 4 language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking in order to communicate in English successfully. Among these four skills, reading skill is an essential skill for further learning. Especially, reading text summary skills after reading is very beneficial to students to gain better understanding and memorizing of the text. Thus, students can consolidate or reflect upon what has been read and relate it to their own knowledge. In addition, reading text summary contributes enormously to develop writing, speaking and listening skills. However, reading text summary is not easy for students to do. It needs more useful techniques to help students summarize texts easily. Because there are still a large number of students having poor reading comprehension not only in rural areas but also in urban ones. As a teacher of Ly Thuong Kiet high school (LTKHS), I find that teaching and learning reading comprehension here still focus on grammar, vocabulary and structures. Hence, students always find it difficult to understand the content of the reading text, to find the main idea, synonym or antonym of the words, and general message of the text and most of them lack of motivation to read. Beside that, there are still many teachers who seem not to pay enough attention to the importance of teaching reading text summary in post reading stage due to the limited time. Consequently, Students can not remember and summarize the text after reading. From the above reasons, I decided to choose : “ Using mind-mapping techniques to develop LTK High school 11 th grade students’ reading text summary skills” for my thesis of the MA course to help students read the text effectively and can summarize the text easily. Hopefully, this study will make a small contribution to the application of teaching reading text summary approach in the post reading stage at Vietnamese high schools in general and at LTK high school in Hai Phong in particular. 2. Aims of the study The aims of this study are to find out the more useful teaching methods for improving students’ reading text summary skills. To be more specific, the primary objectives of the study were set up as follows: - To test the effectiveness of using mind-mapping techniques to develop 11 th grade students’ reading text summary skills compared to conventional techniques. - To investigate the experimental students’ attitudes towards teaching reading text summary through using mind mapping technique. 3. Research hypothesis and questions To achieve the aims and objectives, the study was designed to test the hypothesis: Teaching reading text summary in post reading stage through mind mapping techniques is more effective to the development of students’ summary skills than the traditional approach which emphasizes the memorization of words and contents of the reading passage. In order to find out whether the research hypothesis would be accepted or rejected, the following research questions were formulated and to be answered. 1. Why is using mind mapping techniques effective to improve students’ reading text summary skills? 2. What are the students’ attitudes towards teaching reading text summary in post reading stage through mind mapping techniques after the experimental period? 4. Method of the study This study was conducted based on quasi-experimental research with pretest, posttest, and questionnaire in order to determine the causal relationship between teaching reading text summary through mind mapping and the enhancement of students’ summary skills. Two groups of students were not chosen randomly, they were two intact groups of students involved in the study, one group was labeled the control group and the other the experimental group. 5. Significance of the study Summarizing the reading text in the textbook series for high schools is presented in a traditional way which often focuses on the sentence based summarization. Thus, this study will give an answer to the question whether it is practical to teach reading text summary in the post reading stage through using mind mapping technique in the context of the high school in Vietnam. 6. Scope of the study The study was designed to test the hypothesis that it is possible to teach reading text summary presented in the textbook through mind mapping. Because of the time constraint, the researcher could just carry out an experimental research upon a small sample of 11 th grade students who were not randomly chosen to a control class and an experimental class, (40 students for each class) at LTK High school. The pretest and posttest scores were used to measure both groups’ reading text summary competence before and after the treatment during ten weeks of the second semester of the 2011-2012 academic year. The post program questionnaire was designed to get more feedback from experimental students. 7. Organization of the study The study was divided into three parts which are presented as follows: Part A is the introduction, which presents the rationale and the aim of the study, hypothesis and questions, research method, significance, scope as well as organization of the study. Part B is the development, which includes 3 chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the literature relevant to the study which consists of reading, reading comprehension, summary, and mind mapping techniques based on theoretical and practical evidence. Chapter 2 presents information about the context of the study, the participants, the instruments, the data collection procedure and data analysis procedure. Chapter 3 is the main part of the study that reports and discusses the main findings according to research matter. Part C is the conclusion that presents the author’s reflection and the outcomes of the study as well as indicates some limitations of the study, and finally gives some suggestions for further research. 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From the above reasons, I decided to choose : “ Using mind- mapping techniques to develop LTK High school 11 th grade students’ reading text summary skills for my thesis