MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY
HO THI HUONG
USING MIND MAPS TO INCREASE STUDENTS’
INTEREST IN READING COMPREHENSION
IN NGHE AN COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS
MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION

NGHE AN - 2014
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY
HO THI HUONG USING MIND MAPS TO INCREASE STUDENTS’
INTEREST IN READING COMPREHENSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
On the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to my supervisor, Ph.D. Nguyen Gia Viet, who gave me precious guidance,
comments, suggestions and encouragement throughout my research.
My special thanks are for all my teachers of my M.A. course (TESOL) at the
Post-graduate Department at Vinh University, Nghe An province, for their
interesting and useful lectures.
I also wish to express my sincere thanks to all my colleagues and the first -
year students at Nghe An College of Economics, for their contribution to the data
collection and their attendance in the reading lessons for this research.
Finally, I am grateful to my friends and my family, especially my husband
who gave me a lot of support and encouragement during the time of my study

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ABSTRACT
USING MIND MAPS TO INCREASE STUDENTS’ INTEREST IN
READING COMPREHENSION is a case study about reading comprehension at
Nghe An College of Economics in 2014. The objective of this study is to investigate
if using mind maps can help to encourage students in reading comprehension,
especially for the reading texts in “New Headway” (pre-intermediate) at the first-
year students of Nghe An College of Economics. The subjects of this study were 97
students and 7 teachers in the English group.The study concentrates on answering 3
research questions: Firstly, the researcher wants to investigate students’ and
teacher’s attitudes towards the reading texts in “New Headway” textbooks.
Secondly, the researcher wishes to examine students’ and teacher’s perception about
mind mapping. Thirdly, she hopes to find out if mind mapping technique can help
to increase students’ interest in reading comprehension.To solve these research
questions, the mix-method (both qualitative and quantitative methods) was used in
the study which was carried out in two classes. The data were gathered through

2.1.2. Reading comprehension 8
2.1.3. Effective reading comprehension 8
2.2. Teaching reading in the second language learning classroom 9
2.2.1. The importance of teaching reading in the L2 classroom 9
2.2.2. Reading purposes of second language learners 10
2.2.3. Different ways for L2 learners to process a text 10
2.2.4. Teachers’ roles in a reading lesson 10
2.2.5. Students’ roles in a reading lesson 11
2.3. Mind mapping 11

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2.3.1. The definition of mind mapping 11
2.3.2. Application of mind mapping technique in teaching 12
2.3.3. Benefits of teaching with mind maps 14
2.4. Literature review 14
CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY 19
3.1. Context 19
3.1.1. The setting 19
3.1.2. Participants 20
3.2. Instruments for data collection 21
3.3. Data collection procedures 22
3.4. Analysis 23
3.4.1. Questionnaires 23
3.4.2. Interview 24
CHAPTER 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 25
4.1. Data analysis from the questionnaire 25
4.1.1. For teachers 25
4.1.2. For students 37
4.2. Summary of the questionnaire survey 53

for the text 56
Table 4.29. Students’ attitudes towards the next lessons 57
Table 4.30. Teachers’ ideas about students’ attitudes in reading lessons 57
Table 4.31. Teachers’ views on mind mapping application 58
Table 4.32. Teachers’ views on weak students through the reading lessons
with mind mapping 58
Table 4.33. Teachers’ views on mind mapping 59 vii

LIST OF FIGURES
Pages
Figure 4.1.a. Teachers’ attitudes towards the reading texts in textbook before
seminar and classroom observation. 25
Figure 4.1.b. Teachers’ attitudes towards the reading texts in textbook after
the seminar and classroom observation. 26
Figure 4.2.a. Before students approached mind mapping through seminar and
classroom observation 27
Figure 4.2.b. After students approached mind mapping through seminar and
classroom observation 27
Figure 4.3.a. Before the seminar and classroom observation 28
Figure 4.3.b. After the seminar and classroom observation 29
Figure 4.4.a. Before the seminar and classroom observation 30
Figure 4.4.b. After the seminar and classroom observation 30
Figure 4.6.a. Before the seminar and classroom observation 31
Figure 4.6.b. After the seminar and classroom observation 32
Figure 4.7.a. Before the seminar and classroom observation. 33
Figure 4.7.b. After the seminar and classroom observation 33
Figure 4.8.a. Before the seminar and classroom observation 34


CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Reading leads into an ever-expanding multidimensional world and the reader
is to widen his knowledge through reading. The importance of reading
comprehension has increasingly been recognized and that helps a lot in learning
different fields. The researcher is going to examine if using mind mapping helps to
increase students’ interest in learning reading comprehension. This chapter includes
the rationale to the study, the aim, the scope, the research questions, the significance
of the research, the methodology, and the design of the study.
1.1. Rationale to the study
The researcher intends to discover the effect of using mind mapping technique in
increasing students’ interest in reading comprehension because of several reasons.
At present, reading is a compulsory skill in all schools and vocational trainings
in Vietnam. The English language curriculum for colleges and universities is based
on the four language skills. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing which
are the cores of the curriculum. Learners use these skills to communicate with
people, obtain information and present information, respond to the literary texts and
express themselves creatively According to Carrell (1984:1), reading is considered
as one of the most important of the four macro skills, especially for students
learning English as the second language. Becoming an effective and good reader in
anothet language, a reader can consolidate their already-learning knowledge. Then,
the reading process in foreign language may help students to review as well as
increase their knowledge of the target language through exposure to new vocabulary
and grammar structure in the text. The English Language Curriculum (2000) stated
that reading a lot of texts will enable learners to adjust the speed and style of their
reading to suit the purpose and to extract both implicit and explicit meaning from
the text. Therefore, reading skill is still one of the most important aspects to be
taught in the colleges and universities in order to enable the students to grasp the

showed that the students can not master most of the knowledge that their teachers
provided them. Only 20 percents of them got good marks of seven, eight and nine.
Hardly did they have the mark of ten. The rest of students just got the average mark
that is enough for them to pass the examination.
Over the past seven years of teaching in the college, the researcher realized
that most of the students are weak on reading comprehension skill. Their reading

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process includes reading, translating, looking up the new words, then translating the
tasks in the texts, and after that doing the tasks. It usually takes them more than 60
minutes to read one text in reading parts of the textbook “New Headway”.
Furthermore, students are not very patient. So, they may not follow the text from the
beginning to the end because they feel bored with the texts. In fact, the students in
NACE have not really understood the purposes of reading comprehension. Despite
the teachers’ efforts, most students’ motivation for intensive reading is still low.
Therefore, they always consider the reading lessons the most boring ones in English.
Most of the students here do not have adequate reading comprehension skill to
do what is expected of them.Without comprehension, reading is simply following
words on a page from left to right while sounding them out. The words on the page
have no meaning. And while people read for many different reasons, the chief goal
is to derive some understanding of what the writer is trying to convey and make use
of that information, whether the fact gathering learning a new skill, or for pleasure.
That’s why reading comprehension skill is so important. Without it, learners can not
gather any information and use it to enjoy the richness of life.
There are several reasons why students are weak on reading comprehension.
In their study, Arbaiyah and Zaidah (2001) discovered that students are bad at
reading skill because they lack of independent reading. In comparision with skilled
students, the ones in NCE read less because they are not very fond of doing this
task. The second reason is the method that teachers use to teach students. David

1.2. Aim of the study
The aim of the research is to examine if using mind mapping helps to increase
students’ interest in reading comprehension skill.It aimes at:
1. Identifying students’ perceptions about mind mapping and using mind
mapping in reading comprehension.
2. Examining the effect of using mind mapping on students’ interest in reading skill.
1.3. Research questions
The study aims to answering the following questions:
1. What are the students’ attitudes to the reading comprehension texts in the
textbook?

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2. What are the students’ and the teachers’ perceptions towards mind mapping
in reading comprehension?
3. Does using mind mapping help to increase students’ interest in reading
comprehension?
1.4. Scope of the study
The researcher carries out the investigation at Nghe An College of Economics
to study the result of mind mapping in reading activities to improve the students’
interest and help them to read better.
1.5. Significance of the study
This research attempts to examine whether mind mapping will improve
students’ interest in reading comprehension. Reading will be the most important
aspect in acquiring the target language. Reading comprehension will be the premier
skill in the English Curriculum in the colleges and universities. Mind mapping
strategy will help to increase students’ interest in reading comprehension.
Therefore, the result of this study will prove that mind mapping technique will
make students more interested in reading comprehension. It will help the readers to
verify the strategy to be used and the adjustment can be made when students

study and recommendations for further research.

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CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Definition of reading and reading comprehension
2.1.1. Definition of reading
According to Rumelhart’s study in 1984, reading activity involves the reader,
the text and the interaction between the reader and the text. Therefore learners and
reading texts play very important roles in reading acts. This statement supported the
one in Goodman’s study (1967) considering reading as a process in which the
reader tries his best to reconstruct the message encoded by the writer.
Ur in his simple definition about reading stated that: “reading means reading
and understanding” . Harmer seemed to be interested in the notion of reading. He
introduced to the world, in his study (1989:190), a different view on study. In his
point of view, reading is a process created by both the eyes and the brain. He
explained that in this process, the eyes are responsible for writing the message and
then it’s the brain’s duty to write out the meanings of the message.
Moreover, Rubin,J. and Thompson,I. (1994:91) offered another definition of
reading. According to their points of view, “reading is an active information-
seeking process in which readers relate information in the text to what they already
know”. From this view, the reader’s knowledge of the language and knowledge of
the world is of importance to their reading success.
Although there have been a lot of definitions, the act of reading is not
completely easy to be described. Many definitions have been drawn from different
reading theories by various scholars. All of them are trying to find out the nature of
reading and reading acts, in which the readers, reading process and reading message
are emphasized.

behind these forms.
2.1.3. Effective reading comprehension
As we know that in reading comprehension, comprehension is the reason for
comprehension. In the National Reading Panel (2000), the reporter considered
comprehension as the complex cognitive processes involving the intentional
interaction between the reader and the text to the meaning.

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In the traditional method, teachers expected their students to read a lot of texts
which are different about contents and readability. Students do not feel interested in
what they are reading.They do not integrate with the texts. The teaching method is
traditionally teacher-centered and most of classroom activities deal with rote
learning. In the traditional method, students have inefficient stategies and use them
inflexibly during the reading process. They are unaware of what good
comprehenders should do and need to do when approaching a piece of text. As
Yorio synthesized in 1971 that awareness and control of one’s reading activity and
the ability to monitor one’s own comprehension are very important. In fact,
teaching reading has been given enough care in Nghe An College of Economics.
Students are not taught how to learn as well as how to read the texts efficiently
meanwhile the most important thing of learning depends on student’s own ability to
organise and structure information into memory. The weaker comprehenders with
low ability in reading comprehension can not reorganize the information learnt
from the text and can not connect their own knowledge to the new information
received from the reading text. Such reading processes cause students lack of
motivation to read. One of the teacher’s duties is looking for new and modern
technique to help students to improve reading comprehension. The researcher has
been thinking and studying for a long time about the solution to increase students’
interest in reading comprehension. And using mind maps is the technique that the
researcher is trying to experiment to have the final conclusion.

Linguistists recently have mentioned to many teaching reading approaches
such as the traditional approach, process-based approach and task-based approach
(Hoang et al, 2006a:517). All these approaches believed that the roles of teachers in
a reading lesson are very important.
On the other hand, in Nuttall’s views (2002), teachers are responsible for
choosing the reading texts, designing tasks, facilitating reading process and
monitoring learning progress. As a result, the teachers have a lot of things to do in a
reading lesson. However, Nuttall reminds most of teachers to avoid some mistakes
in teaching reading in which their over-dominant role is one of the serious
mistakes.
To sum up this view, Anderson (2003) and Hedge (2000) listed six major
principles of teaching reading in the classroom. Firstly, teachers must exploit

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students’ background knowledge. Secondly, teachers try to build a strong
vocabulary base. Then, they are responsible for teaching comprehension Fourthly,
teachers’ duty is to teach reading strategies. They must also encourage students to
transform strategies into skills and finally, they set criteria to select reading texts.
2.2.5. Students’ roles in a reading lesson
Nuttall (2003) built up some main roles for teachers in a reading lesson. The
first and foremost responsibility of the learners is taking an active part in learning.
In order to understand the text carefully, they should monitor comprehension. That
means they need to understand how texts work and what they do when they read.
Nuttall assumed that the best way to promote reading skill is to talk about the texts
in class. Then the readers must take risks, that is students have to take the risk of making
mistakes because a mistake is an opportunity to learn. Lastly, as Nuttall stated, learning to
read is learning to give students enormous advantages in life. It may lead to better jobs, to
personal development, interest and enjoyment. Students who do not want to learn to read
can easily cheat but they are only cheating themselves.

mind maps can be used effectively to help communicate information because it is
used to clarify concepts into simple, meaningful displays so that the learners can
develop a holistic understanding of content to be learnt. In his points of view,
teachers may use mind maps at different stages of instruction to prepare students to
approach new information and clarify complex ideas. After the lessons, teachers
may use mind mapping technique to assess and reinforce learning and instruction.
2.3.2. Application of mind mapping technique in teaching
One of the most powerful ways to use mind maps is as lecture notes. Preparing
a lecture in mind map form is much faster than writing it out and has the big
advantage of allowing the lecturer and the student to keep an overview of the whole
subject at all times. A mind mapped lecture is easy to update from year to year
without becoming messy and its mnemonic qualities mean that a brief overview
before the lecture quickly brings the topic right back into focus. Because the
lecturer’s own knowlegde will evolve the same mind map will trigger quite
different lecturers if used from year to year. It makes lecturing more fun and more
interesting for both the lecturer and the students. As a framework for lecturing, a

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Mind Map helps the speaker to hold the balance between spontaneously spoken and
fresh talk, on the other hand, and a clear and a well-structured presentation on the
other. It allows accurate time-keeping during the lecture or, if the time allowed
changes for some reasons, it allows the speaker to edit “on the move” to adjust the
talk to a greater or lesser length, as required.
Yearly planning
Tony and Barry believed that teacher can use Mind Maps to give an overview
of the whole year’s study programme, showing the term divisions and the type of
lessons to be given.
Term planning:
This is a sub-division of the yearly paln, and often takes the form of a smaller

 Mind maps make lessons and presentations more spontaneous, creative and
enjoyable, both for the teacher and the students.Therefore the learning process will
become more exciting.
 Using mind maps, teachers’ notes become more flexible and adaptable.This
creates deep remembering in students’s learning.
 Because Mind Maps present only relevant material in an clear and
memorable form, the students tend to get better marks in examination.
2.4. Literature review
Mind mapping is presentation way of radiant thinking, ultilizing lines, colors,
characters numbers, symbols, images, pictures or keywords, etc to associate and
integrate , visualize the learnt concepts and maximize brain potential.
According to Tony Buzan, when applying mind maps, students’ attention,
coordination ability, logi, reasoning thinkings, analysis, creativity, imagination,
memory ability of planning and integration, speed reading, are enhanced.
Nowadays, the application of mind mapping in education field is very broad. It
is used to help students in cognition and it has been widely applied in kinds of
schools such as: primary or middle school. The size of application includes
languages, social issues as well as scientific fields. However, a few researches
focused on the effects of mind maps on reading comprehension at different levels

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ranging from elemetary to high school.And they were successful in connecting
mind maps with reading comprehension skill.
The first study to be mentioned is one carried out by Xiao and Jiang (2010-
2012). This study was conducted by Xinlian Xiao and Weiying Jiang, two students
at the college of Educational Informational Technology of South China Normal
University in Guangzhou, Guangdong. The purpose of this study was to explore
whether mind mapping technique used in Primary Chinese reading lessons can help
students to clarify the form of the text and the links between the paragraphs.