الفهرس 
Chapter One Introduction and ProblemOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This chapter presents a summary of the study problem, discussions of the results of the study, conclusions, in addition to recommendations and suggestions for further research.
Statement of the Problem
The study problem can be identified in first year preparatory students’ poor mastery of the required reading comprehension skills, in addition to their negative attitudes towards reading in English and reading classes in general, which could be because of traditional methods and techniques used by teachers while teaching reading at English classes. So, the present study attempts to provide answers to the following main question:
- What is the Effectiveness of Using Concept Mapping Strategy in Developing the Reading Comprehension Skills of Preparatory Students and Improving Positively their Attitudes towards Reading in English?
from this main question, the following sub-questions emerge:
1-What are the principles of concept mapping?
2- What are the features of the suggested strategy?
3- What are the reading comprehension skills necessary for preparatory students?
4- How far is concept mapping strategy effective in developing the reading comprehension skills of first year preparatory students?
5- How far is concept mapping strategy effective in improving the students’ attitudes towards reading in English?
Aim of the Study
This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of using a concept mapping strategy in developing the reading comprehension skills and attitudes of preparatory school students towards reading classes in English.
The Study Hypotheses
1-There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students exposed to the proposed strategy and the control group students who received regular instruction on the reading comprehension posttest in favor of the experimental group students.
2-There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students exposed to the proposed strategy and the control group students who received regular instruction on each sub-skill of the reading comprehension posttest in favor of the experimental group students.
3-There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students on the reading comprehension pre-posttest in favor of the post-test.
4-There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students on each skill of the reading comprehension pre-posttest in favor of the post-test.
5-There is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group students exposed to the proposed strategy and the control group students who received the regular instruction in the post administration of the attitude questionnaire in favor of the experimental group.
6-There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students on the administration of the attitude pre-post questionnaire in favor of the post-administration.
Participants of the Study
The participants in this study were 70 students first year preparatory, Meet El Amel prep school for girls, Aga, Dakahlia. The 70 students represented two classes, control (35) and experimental (35). All students’ age ranged from 12-13. The experimental group studied the reading comprehension passages of their textbook (first semester) following the proposed strategy, while the control group studied the reading texts following the regular teaching instruction.
Design of the Study
The design used in this study is the quasi pre-posttest experimental design. Two first year prep school classes were randomly selected to implement the strategy. Then the two classes randomly assigned into two groups experimental and control. The experimental group received instruction through a strategy consisting of three phases to improve their reading comprehension skills. Students of the control group received regular reading classes with their in charge teacher. The pre-posttest was conducted before and after the treatment. An attitude questionnaire was applied before and after the administration of the study to measure first year prep stage students’ attitudes towards reading.
Study Results
• The results showed that concept mapping strategy has a positive effect on reading comprehension skills of prep stage students. The students in the experimental group got better scores in the posttest compared to the control group students’ scores. These findings are consistent with those of Jo’s(2001),Romance and Vitale’s (2001),Han’s(2006),Chang, Sung & Chen (2007),Dolehanty (2008), Chang and Yu (2010), James (2011),Kalhor& Mehran (2017), in that applying the concept-mapping strategy had a direct effect in developing students’ reading comprehension skills.
• The experimental results also showed that the students who learned using the concept-mapping strategy revealed significantly superior perform ancient terms of each reading comprehension sub-skill in the posttest compared to their performance in the pre-test.
• The results of the study showed the effectiveness of concept mapping strategy in improving the attitude of the experimental group students and that there is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group students exposed to the proposed strategy and the control group students who received the regular instruction in the post administration of the attitude questionnaire in favor of the experimental group. In addition, the experimental results also showed that, there is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group students on the administration of the attitude pre-post questionnaire in favor of the post-administration.
Discussion of the Results
According to the results of this study, concept mapping has showed great effectiveness in developing reading comprehension skills of the experimental group students and improving positively their attitudes towards reading classes and reading English texts. Thus, these results will be discussed as follows.
Students in the experimental group were taught through using the suggested reading program based on concept mapping strategy, these students achieved better results than their peers of the control group because these students were given the opportunity to practice the new strategy with the researcher in the classroom.
The scaffolding method used by the researcher while teaching the experimental group students concept mapping strategy, helped them easily learn how to construct a concept map for any English text on their own.
The activities used during administrating the study and the three-stages method helped students to manage the proposed reading comprehension skills and improve them.
The steps of constructing a concept map automatically lead students to master different reading comprehension skills, students should identify the main concept of the text- identifying the main ideas- which is the first step of constructing a map. Thus, students during mapping each reading text learned how to identify the main idea (s) of the text.
After practicing and mastering the skill of identifying the main idea of a text, students started finding the detailed concepts related to the main ones, which lead them to learn the skill of –Identifying facts, key places, events and text details-. This skill is also related to the skill of understanding text embedded ideas and information. Students are supposed to find each detailed idea and information from the text and find out how they are related to the main idea (s).
While constructing the map students have to represent the relations between concepts of the text through using the labeled arrows. This step helped students learn and master the skill of identifying cause and effect relationships and identifying pronoun referents.
If the reading text is about a short story or a serious of events, then students should represent it in the correct order in the map, which is understanding the chronological sequence and arranging the events of the text.
Teaching students the skill of visualizing ideas-through concept mapping reading texts to build reading comprehension-was so important. Visualizing is the ability to hear a story and have a mental image about the text. This helped students create meaning for themselves in their own way based on their own previous knowledge and experiences.
The student-centered classroom and the semantical drawings (visualization) which were provided through applying the concept mapping strategy, helped students to fully and actively participate in the class which lead them eventually to understand each reading text and improve their attitude towards reading classes.
Thus, concept mapping strategy is very effective at many levels, besides visualizing the ideas in a semantic web, it helps students fully understand and easily review the reading text through applying all these activities while constructing each map. Concept maps also helped the students to fully understand and master each one of the proposed reading comprehension sub-skills. In addition, concept mapping showed great effect in improving students’ attitude towards reading English texts.
Conclusions
This study investigated the effectiveness of developing some reading comprehension skills and improving the attitudes of the first year preparatory students towards reading English texts through using concept mapping strategy. So, the following conclusions were drawn:
• The findings of the study revealed that the concept mapping strategy was influential in developing the reading comprehension skills and improving students’ attitude towards reading texts in English.
• Concept mapping strategy was found to be effective in developing the seven target reading comprehension skills (Identifying the main ideas, Understanding the chronological sequence and arranging the events of the text, Identifying facts, key places, events and text details. Identifying cause and effect relationships, Identifying pronoun referents, Understanding text embedded ideas and information, Visualizing ideas.
• The three stages -pre, during and post reading- the researcher followed during the strategy, helped students to fully understand the reading texts and correctly construct a concept map for each one.
• Student-centered classroom is one of the main aims of teaching concept mapping strategy. Students are urged to think for themselves, take decisions, evaluate which are the main concepts and the detailed ones of the text. Students are encouraged to take control of their leaning and make more effort to fully comprehend the target text.
• This strategy helps students learn how to learn. Concept mapping contributes to student confidence by letting students demonstrate what they know. Visual learning helps students clarify their thoughts. Students see how ideas are connected and realize how information can be grouped and organized. With visual learning, new concepts are more thoroughly and easily understood when they are linked to prior knowledge. Visual learning helps students organize and analyze information. Students can use diagrams and plots to display large amounts of information in ways that are easy to understand and help reveal relationships and patterns. Visual learning helps students integrate new knowledge. According to research, students better remember information when it is represented and learned both visually and verbally. Thus, visual leaning including concept mapping helps students learn better, easier and faster, so improving students’ attitudes towards reading texts in English.
Recommendations
On the basis of the experimental study and its results, the following recommendations are provided:
• Based on the results, it is recommended that, the learners use concept map to deepen their learning and improve academic achievements therefore, Executives and educators in the field of education could use the concept map as a teaching strategy, learning task and assessment tool in education.
• Teachers should consider applying concept mapping strategy in reading classes if they are aiming at stirring students’ attention and making their classes more interesting and unbarring, as this study showed the effectiveness of concept mapping strategy in improving positively the attitudes of the experimental group students towards reading English texts and they agreed that this study made them like reading classes more.
• Concept mapping strategy was found to be effective in developing the seven target reading comprehension skills (Identifying the main ideas, Understanding the chronological sequence and arranging the events of the text, Identifying facts, key places, events and text details. Identifying cause and effect relationships, Identifying pronoun referents, Understanding text embedded ideas and information, Visualizing ideas, so it is recommended to use concept mapping in developing other reading comprehension skills in all levels.
• Concept mapping strategy is recommended as an effective evaluating tool. After studying a unit, students could be asked to create a concept map as homework or a standard test. It can help to illustrate their knowledge of a subject more thoroughly than multiple choice tests may, while also reinforcing what they know, making the test itself a learning experience.
• Concept mapping is recommended as an effective strategy in enhancing self-learning and student-centered methods of teaching.
• It is recommended that teachers should change their teacher-centered method of teaching. Students should take control of the process of their own learning. Teachers role should be only attributed to directing students through learning and checking their worksheets.
• Concept mapping is also recommended for brain-storming. Although they are often personalized and idiosyncratic, concept maps can be used to communicate complex ideas. Concept mapping can also be seen as a first step in ontology building, and can also be used flexibly to represent formal argument — similar to argument maps. Concept maps are widely used in education and business.
• Students should be provided with effective and long term training methodologies to fully understand the concept mapping strategy before using it in English texts.
Suggestions for Further Research
Based on the results of this study, the researcher presents some suggestions for further research:
1- A proposed research based on concept mapping strategy to develop writing, reading and listening skills of all the educational levels.
2- Investigating the effectiveness of concept mapping strategy in developing critical reading skills for secondary stage.
3- Examining the effectiveness of concept mapping strategy of improving -all educational levels- students’ attitude towards reading English texts.
4- Designing a strategy based on concept mapping to develop grammar and vocabulary improvement.
5- Investigating the effectiveness of concept mapping strategy on developing reading comprehension skills of short and long stories.
6- Executives and educators in the field of education could investigate the effectiveness of concept mapping as a teaching strategy, learning task and assessment tool of all educational levels.