4.2.2. The students’ reflection on the using of mind mapping in reading
4.2.2.2. The students’ reflection on the teacher’s application of mind
4.2.2.2.1. The advantages of mind mapping
The advantages of mind mapping which were collected from the students’
responses were classified into the four themes including: (1) students’ motivation enhancement, (2) stimulating and facilitating the reading comprehension process, (3) cooperative learning and (4) encouraging students’ creativity. Hence, the data analysis for the advantages of mind mapping was framed along the sub themes.
4.2.2.2.1.1. Enhancing students’ motivation
As a whole, there was a tendency regarding the advantages of mind mapping on enhancing students’ motivation that the students admitted the strengths of mind
0,0%
20,0%
40,0%
60,0%
80,0%
very
excited excited
not excited
not excited so much
78,6%
21,4%
0% 0%
mapping in terms of attraction, lively classroom atmosphere and freedom of exchanging the ideas with friends. The chart 4.2.2.2.1.1 could give more details for this.
Chart 4.2.2.2.1.1: Students’ responses to the advantages of mind mapping on enhancing students’ motivation
Most of students recognized that using mind mapping could attract them in the reading comprehension lessons. Indeed, even up to 97.6% of students said agree and strongly agree with the attractiveness of mind mapping.
This treatment not only provided the pleasure for students but it also created a lively classroom atmosphere. 41/42 students supported for the ideas that they didn’t feel bored in the class with mind mapping.
In addition, using mind mapping in reading lesson allowed students build good friendships with their friends because they had chances to freely exchange their ideas with their partners. This contributed the decrease of gaps between students. This
0,0%
20,0%
40,0%
60,0%
80,0%
100,0%
Strongly agree
Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree
69,0%
28,6%
2,4%
0% 0%
85,7%
11,9%
2,4% 0% 0%
64,3%
33,3%
2,4%
0% 0%
Attractive
Lively and not bored classroom atmosphere Free to exchange the ideas with friends
advantage was strongly voted by 64.3% students along with 33.3% students raising their agreement.
However, there was one student (2.4%) who did not recognize the positive aspect of mind mapping on creating motivation. He (S19) was not really interested in reading comprehension lesson using mind mapping.
Obviously, motivation was one of the important factors to create a successful learning process and the above analysis admitted that using mind mapping in reading comprehension could enhance students’ motivation. Potentially, it ensured a lively, attractive and free classroom environment that students expected to engage themselves in.
4.2.2.2.1.2. Stimulating and facilitating the reading comprehension process
Beside the advantage of mind mapping in enhancing the motivation that students could find from the start, they could also exploit multiple effects of mind mapping in their reading comprehension.
Firstly, the mind mapping was realized as a great strategy so as to stimulate the students’ learning process. This property was explicated through the improvement of the students’ initiative, their brainpower as well as the ease of comprehending and applying mind maps. The chart 4.2.2.2.1.2a below showed the students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on stimulating the learning process.
Chart 4.2.2.2.1.2a: Students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on stimulating the learning process
As can be seen from the chart above, a half of students (50%) found that mind mapping could extremely help them become more proactive in learning reading and 42.9% of students agreed for this effect. There were three students (7.1%) who were not sure about this feature of mind mapping.
In addition, except four students had no ideas for their improvement of brainpower, the rest of students (90.5%) voted the idea that their brainpower broadly developed through the learning reading comprehension with mind mapping, and it could definitely evoke the potential of the brain.
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20,0%
30,0%
40,0%
50,0%
60,0%
Strongly agree
Agree
Uncertain
Disagree
Strongly disagree 50,0%
42,9%
7,1%
0% 0%
38,1%
52,4%
9,5%
0% 0%
47,6% 52,4%
0% 0%
0%
54,8%
45,2%
0% 0%
0%
Help students be more proactive Develop students' brainpower Be easy to understand Be easy to apply
Likewise, it was clear that providing comprehendible input allowed the students’ acquisition to get more beneficial. Accordingly, all of students (42/42) shared the agreement that mind mapping was easy to understand. As a result, it could be explained why all of them believed that mind mapping was easy to apply.
Secondly, the application of mind mapping also brought the benefit of facilitating the reading comprehension process. The table 4.2.2.2.1.2b below provided a summary of the data analysis for this facilitation.
Facilitating the reading comprehension process
Strongly agree Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree Mean
1 2 3 4 5 3.0
0
Be able to catch the writer’s ideas
25
(59.5%)
13
(31%)
4
(9.5%) 0
(0%) 0
(0%) 1.50
Be easy to recognize the logical linking between the paragraphs in the reading texts
25 (59.5%)
12 (28.6%)
5 (11.9%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
1.52
Arrange the branches of information related to the specific topic
18 (42.9%)
18 (42.9%)
6 (14.3%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
1.71
Be able to quickly find out the main content of reading text presented through the key words
20 (47.6%)
19 (45.2%)
3 (7.1%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
1.60
Table 4.2.2.2.1.2b: Students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on facilitating the reading comprehension process
The figures in the table 4.2.2.2.1.2b proved a fact that 38/42 students (90.5%) could catch the ideas of the writer in the reading texts thank to using mind mapping.
Moreover, also roughly the same number - 37 students (88.1%) found it easy to recognize the logical linking between the paragraphs in the reading texts.
That the information was logically arranged in the branches which connected to the central topic was considered as one more benefit of mind mapping. Accordingly, this advantage was recognized by almost of students (85.8%). In addition, the branches of information were presented by key words only; hence, it was amazing when 92.9% of students shared the ideas that they were able to approach the main content of the reading texts as quickly as possible with mind mapping.
With the mean value of all items around 1.6, it could be concluded that the majority of students agreed that mind mapping was a suitable strategy to facilitate their reading comprehension process in terms of writer’s ideas, linking paragraph, main content and specific topic of the reading texts.
Beside enhancing motivation and stimulating and facilitating the reading comprehension process, the students also realized that using mind mapping helped them understand and memorize the content of reading texts quickly, easily and longer.
The chart 4.2.2.2.1.2c supplied a view for this.
Chart 4.2.2.2.1.2c: Students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on understanding and memorizing the reading lesson
As seen from the chart 4.2.2.2.1.2c, most of students (92.9%) revealed their agreement that using mind mapping in reading comprehension lessons could help them quickly understand the lessons right away at class. In addition, the same number of students asserted they remembered the lessons longer when applying mind mapping in their studying. As a result, it became easy for students to memorize the information in the reading texts with mind mapping. This was voted by 35/42 students (83.3%).
As such, from the students’ responses, it could be said that mind mapping was a great application for reading comprehension. Mind mapping not only aroused and promoted students’ reading comprehension process, but it also helped students
38,1%
54,8%
7,1%
0% 0%
42,9%
50,0%
7,1%
0% 0%
40,4%
42,9%
16,7%
0% 0%
0,0%
10,0%
20,0%
30,0%
40,0%
50,0%
60,0%
Strongly agree Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree
Quickly understand the lesson at class Remember the lesson longer
Memorize the information easily
4.2.2.2.1.3. Improving students’ group-work skill and students’ creativity
Aside with the advantages previously presented, mind mapping could improve student’s group work skills when they discussed the lessons in groups or teams. One of the benefits of working in groups was that students could learn how to present their opinions and how to listen to the others’ ideas with deference. Students’ responses for this feature of mind mapping were specifically presented in the chart 4.2.2.2.1.3 beloved.
Chart 4.2.2.2.1.3a: Students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on improving students’ group work skill
The results from the chart above revealed that mind mapping could significantly promote the skill of working in groups for students. This was elevated with the support of 39/42 students (occupied of 92.8%). Only three students showed their disbelieves in this item.
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Strongly agree
Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree
57,1%
35,7%
4,8%
2,4% 0%
Along with group work skill, mind mapping could also improve students’
creativity because to create a good mind map asked a student to master in choosing suitable colors and pictures. To know more about this, let’s take a look at the chart 4.2.2.2.1.3b below about students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on improving students’ creativity.
Chart 4.2.2.2.1.3b: Students’ responses of the advantage of mind mapping on improving students’ creativity
The figure from the chart showed a fact that there was a broad consensus about the students’ creativity improvement of using mind mapping. The great number of 88.1% despondences was considered as a convincing evidence for this. However, there were still five students (11.9%) disagreed with this benefit of mind mapping.
To sum up, promoting students’ group work skill and creativity were two more benefits of mind mapping which were recognized and asserted by most of students.
This, one more time, proved that mind mapping was a suitable application for teaching and learning reading comprehension.
42.9%
45.2%
9.5%
2.4% 0%
Strongly agree Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree
4.2.2.2.2. The difficulties of mind mapping
In spite of so many positive effects of mind mapping on reading comprehension that recognized in the previous sections, there still existed some possible difficulties of mind mapping when introduced in the classroom. These could be briefly revealed in the table 4.2.2.2.2 below.
Difficulties of mind mapping
Strongly agree Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly disagree Mean
1 2 3 4 5 3.0
0
Consuming a lot of time for presenting mind maps on papers
0
(0%)
18
(42.9%)
15
(35.7%)
9
(21.4%) 0
(0%)
2.79
Being hard for students whose vocabulary stocks are limited
0
(0%)
19
(45.2%)
16
(38.1%)
7
(16.7%) 0
(0%)
2.71
Being hard for students who don't directly make the mind map to understand and use it
0
(0%)
27
(64.3%)
4
(9.5%)
11
(26.2%) 0
(0%)
2.62
Table 4.2.2.2.2: Students’ responses on difficulties of mind mapping in classroom As can be seen from the table 4.2.2.2.2, one of the difficulties of using mind mapping in class which got the great number of agreements was that students who don't directly make the mind map felt hard to understand and use it. Up to 64.3% of
students concluded that while 26.2% disagreed with and 9.5% had no idea for this issue.
The difficulty which ranked second according to the student’s responses was that the students whose vocabulary stocks were limited found it hard to acquire the mind map completely. There were 19/42 students (45.2%) recognized this problem;
however, 16.7% disagreements along with 38.1% neutral showed that the students who had lack of vocabulary still achieved the lesson with mind mapping without any problems.
The other difficulty was time-consuming for presenting mind maps on papers.
The majority of students (42.9%) supported for this issue while the 15 others (35.7%) were uncertain for their ideas whether they agreed or disagreed. 21.4% asserted there was no problem about consuming time when they noted down the mind map on paper.
With the mean of all items in the range around 2.7, it could be concluded that nearly a half of students admitted that they met some difficulties in learning reading comprehension with mind mapping in terms of time consuming, the adversity of limited vocabulary of students and the trouble of indirect participants. These difficulties were also considered as the disadvantages of mind mapping when applying it in the teaching and learning reality.
4.2.2.2.3. The frequency of using of mind mapping
Obviously, the application of mind mapping in reading class offered a lot of advantages in terms of enhancing motivation, stimulating and facilitating in reading
recognized these advantages in favor. This could be a good reason for the responses about the desire of students’ frequency of using of mind mapping. The chart 4.2.2.2.3 below can show the students’ ideas.
Chart 4.2.2.2.3: Students’ responses on the frequency of using of mind mapping
From the chart 4.2.2.2.3, it was clear to see that the students’ opinion for the frequency of using mind mapping were quite different. In details, majority of respondents (69.1%) wished to use mind mapping in their lessons “usually”. Some of students (9.5%) desired to use it 100% in their lessons; therefore, they voted for
“always”. In addition, 21.4% students wanted to use mind mapping “sometimes”
while no one supported for the idea of never using mind mapping any more.