IJTE - ISSN: 2768-4563 International Journal of TESOL & Education Vol. 1; No.

3; 2021

The English-majored Students’ Practices of Mind Maps in Writing Skills

Ngo Thi Hien Trang1*, Tran Thi Thuy Oanh1

1
University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Danang, Vietnam
*
Corresponding author’s email: [email protected]

EOI: http://eoi.citefactor.org/10.11250/ijte.01.03.017

Received: 01/11/2021 Revision: 19/11/2021 Accepted: 23/11/2021 Online: 24/11/2021

ABSTRACT

Writing is one of the two productive and four vital skills in acquiring
any foreign language. Therefore, it is necessary for language
educators, teachers, linguists, and learners to make use of a wide
range of different methods to enhance all four English skills for
language learners. The researchers have the assumption that using
the mind mapping technique positively influences the improvement
of this productive skill for the first-year students at the Faculty of
English, University of Foreign Language Studies – The University
of Danang. The purposes of this article entitled “The English-
majored Students’ Practices of Mind Maps in Writing Skills” are to
investigate the practices of mind maps related to the rate of
occurrence, the phases in writing, and the perceptions of first-year
students when taking advantage of mind maps to boost their writing
skill. This research is quantitatively and qualitatively carried out,
which gathered information from three research instruments:
classroom observation, interviews, and questionnaires for freshmen
Keywords: Mind students. The assumption of the researchers was proved to be correct
maps; occurrence; since the first-year students advocated the effectiveness of mind
perceptions; phases; maps in writing skills at different rates and often used mind maps
writing skills. during the pre-writing stage.

Introduction
In the era of globalization and integration among nations in the world, improving English
language teaching and learning in all school levels, namely primary, lower secondary, and upper
secondary levels, has always been the aim of the Ministry of Education and Training in
Vietnam. At Faculty of English, University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of
Danang (FE, UFLS - UD), for graduation, senior students must hand in the English language
certificates, namely Test Of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), International English
Language Testing System (IELTS), or Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency

CITATION | Ngo, T. H. T., & Tran, T. T. O. (2021). The English-majored Students’ Practices of Mind Maps in
Writing Skills. International Journal of TESOL & Education, 1(3), pp. 301-312. EOI:
http://eoi.citefactor.org/10.11250/ijte.01.03.017
https://i-jte.org Ngo Thi Hien Trang & Tran Thi Thuy Oanh Vol. 1; No. 3; 2021

(VSTEP). To be more specific, they must earn an overall band of at least 8.5 points out of ten,
which corresponds to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level
C1. At UFLS-UD, first-year FE students have to study the integrated skills of two receptive and
other two productive skills in the Preliminary English Test (PET) exam format.
Understanding the significance of writing ability in particular, as well as four English skills in
general, lecturers at UFLS – UD have been seeking a wide variety of teaching methodologies,
applying them, and doing action research in classrooms in order to give students highly-
motivating lectures to not only get the graduation certificate in the short-term plan but also
enhance their English language skills in long-term use. According to Rao (2007), writing skills
help learners encourage thinking and analyzing skills, organize ideas, and summarize ideas;
therefore, there is no shadow of a doubt that writing plays a crucial part in acquiring a foreign
language.
The obstacles that most of the students during their first academic school year at FE, UFLS-UD
encountered in writing skills could be the word limit of the writing tasks, the inability to identify
what writing approaches should be utilized to a particular writing task type, the lack of lexical
resource, and the shortage of writing ideas. To solve the last two aforementioned problems,
mind maps were considered to be used by the researchers. It is widely advocated that many
papers have looked into the usage of mind maps; however, it seems that no study has looked
into the application of mind maps in the writing skills of UFLS English-majored students. The
article“The English-majored Students’ Practices of Mind Maps in Writing Skills” was
conducted for the reasons above.

Literature review
Writing skills, as claimed by Meyers (2005), are important language skills. According to Byrne
(1979) and Richards (1990), writing skills use symbols consisting of alphabetical letters,
punctuations, and spaces to form words, sentences, stories, essays, or articles. According to
White (1994), writing skills are believed to be an essential skill in learning English as a foreign
language and the most challenging to be acquired by language learners since it involves
different skills and conventions. Kepner (1991) points out that when practicing writing skills,
learners often make many mistakes, namely spelling, the lack of idea extension, the shortage of
vocabulary, and grammatical mistakes. However, Kepner (1991) also suggests two ways to
improve learners' accuracy in writing skills. The first and foremost is the ability to learn
sentence structures. Additionally, the support of language teachers also plays an important role
in enhancing learners' writing skills. For instance, after they finish their writing, correction and
feedback from the teachers are extremely necessary for their writing skills improvement.
Therefore, suitable strategies which comprise of smartphones and portable devices, blog-based
peer response, self-regulated learning strategies, and computers supported reasoning mapping
as suggested in Le (2021), Pham and Usaha (2009), Tran (2021), and Elsegood and Rahimi
(2009), respectively should be applied to acquire this skill efficiently. These researchers

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advocate the effectiveness of such techniques in improving their students’ writing

performances.
Many researchers (Ahangari& Behzady, 2011; Budd, 2004; Buzan, 2006, 2007; De Porter,
2008; Lee, 2010) share common views towards the efficacy of mind mapping techniques in
writing skills. Relating mind maps, Tony Buzan is the creator of this learning method, which
dates back to the late 1960s. According to Buzan (2007), mind mapping is "a creative thinking
device that represents normal work brain." (p.68). As could be understood from his definition,
constructing a mind map is similar to how the brain works. Supporting concepts can radiate
outward on several branches of the map, with the keyword or theme in the center. When used
with written content, mind maps are regarded as an efficient strategy in learning a foreign
language. Buzan (2006) also states that a mind map is a visual tool that language learners can
utilize to think and generate ideas by taking notes and developing notions and opinions. It works
by combining data from various sources and showing it as keywords in a vibrant, colorful
manner. Because two hemispheres of the brain are stimulated, Budd (2004) and De Porter
(2008) concur that this strategy can assist learners in generating and extending ideas, as well as
trigger memories. Mind maps can help language learners naturally express their thoughts and
build associations between concepts and words in this way. Hence, there is a high possibility
that it is beneficial for first-year English-majored students to use this method to develop their
writing skills. A mind map is, indeed, considered a helpful strategy for language-majored
learners since it has been shown to improve learners' writing skills significantly, make the
writing process thorough and meaningful, and assist learners in communicating their thoughts
effectively. Despite disparities in geographical locations and teaching-learning environments,
mind maps can help students improve their English acquisition in general and their writing
ability in particular (Ahangari& Behzady, 2011; Lee, 2010).
Research Aims
The aims of this research are to investigate the practices of using mind maps by English-
majored first-year students at FE, UFLS – UD, which include the occurrence, writing phases,
and perceptions.
Research Questions
The researchers carried out this study to answer three research questions:
1. How often do English-majored first-year students use mind maps in writing skills??
2. What phases in a writing lesson do English-majored first-year students use mind maps?
3. What are the perceptions of English-majored first-year students on the use of mind maps
in writing skills?

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Methods
Pedagogical Setting and Participants
There are eight faculties at UFLS-UD. The Faculty of English has gained an essential role in
training and providing resources for competent language users and meeting the need of
researching, learning, and using English in the local regions and others. There are two semesters
of a whole academic school year, and each semester comprises 15 weeks. At FE, there are two
majors, namely English Translation and Interpreting and English Communications, in which
the latter has just commenced this academic school year of 2021-2022. In this study, the
researchers invited 240 English-majored first-year students in the former major. The
participants aged from 18 to 21, and 50% of them have been studying this language for ten
years. More than 120 first-year students who live in big cities in Vietnam start learning English
at the age of 5 or 6 years old, and the rest have been learning English officially at grade 3 of
primary schools when they are nine years old.
The core teaching curriculum compiled for first-year students at FE is at the intermediate level
or CEFR level B1; therefore, FE has been using two commercial books named “Solution – Pre
Intermediate” and “PET Result” of the publishing house of Oxford University Press for over
ten years. The former is for General English (GE)-B1.1 and GE-B1.3 and is written by Tim
Falla and Paul A Davies, while the latter is for GE-B1.2 and GE-B1.4 and is written by Jenny
Quintana.
Table 1. Textbooks and participants
Time Classes Quantity Subjects Textbooks
Semester I 19CNA05 40 GE-B1.1 Unit 1– Unit 5
August 2019 - 19CNA07 38 Solution: Pre-Intermediate
December 2019 19CNA08 42
Semester II 19CNA11 39 GE-B1.4 Unit 7 – Unit 12
January 2020 - PET Result
May 2021
19CNA10 41
19CNA03 40
As evidently seen from table 1, these first-year students had finished their first academic school
years of 2019-2020 at UFLS - UD; and were meant to achieve level 3, which corresponded to
CEFR test level B1. There were 240 first-year students in 6 different classes consisting of
19CNA05, 19CNA07, 19CNA08, 19CNA11, 19CNA10, and 19CNA03. The three classes of
19CNA05, 19CNA07, and 19CNA08 studied GE-B1.1 making up from unit 1 to unit 5 of
Solution: Pre-Intermediate in the semester I from August 2019 to December 2019. In semester
II from January 2020 to May 2021, the three remaining classes took the course of GE-B1.4,
including the last six units of PET Result.

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Data Collection and Analysis

To gain data sufficiently and effectively about the practice of mind maps in writing skills by
English-majored first-year students at FE, a set of questionnaires and the interviews for first-
year students conducted at the 15th week of each semester which is also the last week of every
semester. The researchers also conducted the observation in writing classrooms during the 15
weeks of each semester. These three aforementioned research instruments were chosen as the
research instruments to collect data for this research.
Initially, a sheet of classroom observation was designed and for the researchers to have an
overview of the practice of mind maps in writing skills by English-majored first-year students.
The observation during the academic years of 2019-2020 took place in writing classrooms with
direct interaction among the researchers and students where offline classes were still in
progress.
Secondly, the researchers wrote a set of questionnaires with both closed and open-ended
questions. Specifically, the first part has two questions about the range of first-year students’
age and their English learning duration; whereas, the second part consists of five questions
which concern the frequency, the phases of a writing lesson, and the perceptions of first-year
students on the practice of mind map to improve their writing skills. At the end of semester I,
this set of questionnaires was uploaded to Google Drive, which subsequently released a link for
the researchers. The researchers sent this link to six different classes via Messenger or Zalo in
order to gather information for analysis.
At last, the researchers carried out interviews which aimed to support what the researchers
observed. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at the end of each offline semester. Since
240 first-year students took part in the interview, the researchers had 240 interviews at a time.
To answer three research questions, data from questionnaires, interviews, and observation were
examined quantitatively and qualitatively. The researchers recognized and categorized the data
into three groups of instruments after it was collected. The data from the interview,
questionnaires, and observation were subsequently demonstrated in percentages and
accompanied by charts, figures, and tables thanks to the support of Excel software. The research
question of the occurrence of mind maps in EFL writing skills was answered thanks to the use
of questionnaires. In order to investigate at which stages in writing lessons first-year students
utilize mind maps, the researchers made use of classroom observations, interviews, and
questionnaires. The last question of the perceptions of first-year students on mind maps in
writing skills was found by using all three instruments as aforementioned. Based on this
quantitative analysis, the researchers discussed the results and suggested some implications for
English-majored first-year students at FE, UFLS-UD to better use mind maps in writing skills.

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Findings and Discussion

Occurrence of Mind Maps in Writing Skills
What should be highlighted from figure1 is that none of the students always or never utilized
mind maps in EFL writing classes. This result could be possibly originated from the challenges
that they faced when drawing mind maps, namely students' inability to identify the main and
minor content of a writing requirement, the time duration to draw a mind map, the lack of lexical
resources, and their terrible drawing skills.

15%
Occurrence
5%
Often
80%
Sometimes

Seldom

Figure 1. Occurrence of Mind Maps in Writing Skills

On the other hand, this table also revealed that 177 students out of 240 occupying 73.75% often
made use of mind maps because mind maps might assist them in brainstorming lexical resources
and generating writing ideas by making a connection among primary ideas with supplement
ones. Only 40 (16.67%) and 23 (9.58%) students sometimes and seldom utilized this learning
method, respectively which were roughly 4.5 and more than 7.5 times lower than the often used
percentage at 73.75%. These difficulties synthesized from interview and observation caused
the fact that students felt demotivated always to use this method; however, the fact that there
were no students who never used this technique, a minority of them who sometimes and seldom
utilized it, and the majority who often took advantage of it clarified the reason why mind maps
were useful for first-year students in their EFL writing classes.

Writing Phases of Using Mind Maps

When conducting an EFL writing lesson, there are three phases, namely pre-writing, while-
writing, and post-writing. To investigate the writing phases where first-year students at FE,
UFLS – UD drew mind maps, the researchers conducted observations, interviews, and a set of
questionnaires to gather data.
The results from observations of the researchers and students' interviews showed that the first-
year students mostly took advantage of mind maps before they started to do their writing tasks;

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meanwhile, the occurrence of this technique at the while-writing phase hit bottom. The writing
tasks in the two officially-used teaching materials for English-majored first-year students
involve writing formal letters to apply for a job or request information, informal emails to
relatives or friends to apologize for mistakes, short stories, and film reviews.

15%

5% Phases
Pre-writing

80% While-writing

Post-writing

Figure 2. Writing Phases of Using Mind Maps

The results from questionnaires considered to be the last data collection instrument in this study
could be apparently depicted in figure 2 above. This technique ranked the top by EFL students
at the pre-writing stage at exactly 80%, which was more than fivefold compared to the second
most used stage of post-writing at 15% and 16 fold as opposed to the least used stage of while-
writing at precisely 5%. The percentage of using mind maps occurred in every stage of a writing
lesson could be inferred that this technique was useful to help them develop this skill. To make
it more specific, before first-year students started to achieve their writing tasks, they often drew
a mind map to list lexical resources which had relevance to the topic of writing requirements.
According to them, post-writing ranked the second since they had a tendency to use the mind
mapping technique to cover more theme-related new words and supporting ideas from their
peer writing papers to review for their later writing test easily. While they were writing their
papers, they created mind maps if they lost the terminology or ideas. It could be possibly stated
that mind maps were used at different rates and at different phases of writing instruction.
English-majored Students’ Perceptions on Mind Maps in Writing Skills
The researchers discovered students' perceptions of the efficaciousness of this learning method
in EFL writing classes by classroom observation, interviews, and questionnaires.

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Image 1. English-majored Students Using Mind Maps in Writing Skills

Thanks to the first two data collection of classroom observation and interviews, the majority of
students expressed an interest in creating mind maps to improve their writing skills, as shown
in image two since the enhancement in their writing skills was evidently reported by marks
given by lecturers for writing assessment at the end of each semester. Another reason that should
be taken into consideration was traced back to the fact that they might establish a logical
sequence for more coherent ideas in their writing papers by learning additional topic
vocabulary. There was no record concerning the idea that the mind mapping technique was not
beneficial.

70.00% 62.5%
Percentage (%)

60.00%
50.00%
40.00% 30.83%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
6.67%
0% 0%
0.00%

Effectiveness

Figure 3. Students’ Perceptions on Effectiveness of Mind Maps in Writing Skills

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Looking at the column chart of figure 3 in greater detail, with 62.5% of "very effective" voters,
30.83% of "very effective" voters, and 6.67% of "moderately effective" voters, 100% of EFL
first-year students valued using this strategy to improve their writing skills. No participants
denied the efficacy of this technique since 0% was seen by the "slightly effective" and "not at
all effective" voters. In summary, the analysis of such proportion reaffirmed the efficiency of
using mind maps to boost first-year students' writing skills in EFL classes at FE, UFLS – UD.

Conclusion
To sum up, this work addressed the three research questions on the occurrence, writing phases,
and students' views toward the usage of mind mapping technique in writing skills of English-
majored students in their first year at FE, UFLS – UD during the academic school years 2019-
2020.
In terms of the occurrence of mind maps in EFL writing classes, a remarkable differentiation
among the occurrence, namely "always," "often," "sometimes," "rarely," and "never," was
recorded. The most easily recognized belonged to the choice of "often" as their learning method
in their writing classes. Since the obstacles students had to confront when utilizing mind maps
included the lack of lexical resources, the bad skills of mind map drawing, the inability to
generate primary and supplement ideas, and time duration to draw a mind map, mind maps
were neither always nor never drawn by the first-year students at FE, UFLS - UD.
Regarding the writing phases, before starting to write a particular task required by their
lecturers, first-year students tended to draw mind maps to make a list of related-topic
vocabulary and establish a coherent chain of ideas. The stage of post-writing stood at the second
and was followed by the while-writing phase. When it came to writing exercises that needed
them to work alone, first-year students tended to develop thought maps. When it came to writing
activities in pairs, mind maps were used less than individual work.
Regarding first-year students' perceptions on the efficacy of mind maps in EFL writing classes,
first-year students stated this technique’s effectiveness at different levels with positive opinions.

Suggestions
Image 1, drawn by a group of first-year students in their presentation periods at FE, UFLS-UD,
set an example of a standardized mind map as suggested by Buzan; however, it took first-year
students a great amount of time to draw since there should be pictures to illustrate their ideas,
and color to make the mind map eye-catching.

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Image 2. A Model Mind Map Drawn by First-Year Students at FE, UFLS -UD
The researchers recommended a model of a less complicated mind map compared to the
original one by Buzan, as illustrated in figure 4. Students can make use of this mind map model
and apply it in EFL writing classes with the hope to shorten the drawing time length. It is highly
believed that students do not have to spend such much time coloring and drawing images for
mind maps since there is no image or color embedded in this simplified mind map model.

Main idea 1 to Detail 1

Supporting idea 1
the question Detail 2

Detail 1
Main idea 2 to
Supporting idea 2
the question Detail 2

Figure 4. A Model of Simplified Mind Map

Figure 5 sets an example of the simplified mind maps drawn by first-year students at FE, UFLS
– UD. For instance, to write down a paragraph of leisure activities, English-majored students
fill in two boxes of the main ideas with "Read" and “Listen 2 music”. Subsequently, to generate
main ideas, students have to think of the supporting ideas by raising other questions related to
the main ideas such as “Where do you read?” and “Why do you listen to music?”. After thinking
the two supplement questions, students add in the supporting idea 1 box with "library", and
supporting idea 2 box with "balance life + spirits". The “library” box will be extended by the
replacement of detail 1 and 2 boxes. Specifically, detail 1 box is substituted by “quiet” and
detail 2 box is added by “variety”. The branch of "balance life + spirits", "work load" and "1-2
hours" are the two supporting ideas.

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quiet
Read library
variety

work load
balance life +
Listen 2 music
spirits 1-2 hrs

Figure 5. A Simplified Mind Map in Writing Skills Drawn by Students

Whenever first-year students finish their mind map drawings for vocabulary and ideas, they
begin to write to fulfill their writing task. A writing paragraph is generated by an English-
majored first-year students with the support of the mind map in figure 5 this student draws.
Reading books and listening to music are my leisure activities. In terms of reading books, I like
reading books in the library at my university campus. Initially, the atmosphere there is very ideal
for reading because all the students have to keep quiet. Hence, I could absolutely concentrate on
my reading. Furthermore, a great number of materials and references are well-organized on
shelves which make it not challenging to search for. Also, books about general knowledge are
easy to get access to. Additionally, listening to melodic rhythms is one of my hobbies which helps
me balance my life and my spirits. I am now an English-majored freshman at Faculty of English,
University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Danang; then I have a lot of workload
which makes me sometimes feel stressed. I usually spend 1 to 2 hours a day listening to music
when having free time, or at the same time studying and listening to music makes me less stressed.
These are two free time activities I am keen on the most.
After students accomplish their writing performances, they have to work in pair for peer
correction. At the following step, thanks to the peer correction, they have accomplish their final
draft before submitting it to lecturers. Their lecturers subsequently assess students’ writing
papers by giving feedbacks and making comments via emails or face-to-face conversations in
writing classes.

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Biodata
Ngo Thi Hien Trang has more than 10 years of teaching experience at Faculty of English,
University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Danang, Vietnam. Her expertise
and interests include language teaching methodology and English linguistics. She has published
papers in conference proceedings and WOS and SCOPUS journals.
Tran Thi Thuy Oanh is a senior lecturer at University of Foreign Language Studies – The
University of Danang, Vietnam. She had a Ph.D's degree in English Linguistics and spent a
research course at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, French Republic. Her current research
fields are English linguistics, pedagogy and education.

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