The Effects Of Mind Mapping And Outlining On Vietnamese EFL Students' Writing Performance And Attitudes: An Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study
Authors:   , Doan Lan Vy 
Published: April 2022

<p><b>Methods of foreign language teaching in Vietnam’s higher education have become increasingly learner-centered where students are expected to be self-regulated learners. Increasing attention has been paid to the integrated-skill approach in which writing has been claimed to be the most challenging skill for both teachers to teach and students to acquire. Current writing practices focusing on form and error-free written products are exerting great pressure on EFL undergraduates who are beginning academic writers, many of whom lack confidence in their learning-to-write process. To address this, a growing amount of research has been undertaken on the L2 writing process and the use of writing strategies. However, several aspects comparing the effects of different handwritten types of pre-writing techniques on young adult writers’ performance and attitudes and the transfer effect of these techniques in a high-stakes condition remain under-investigated.</b></p>
<p>This thesis investigates the effects of mind mapping and outlining as pre-writing techniques by looking at differences between students taught one of these pre-writing techniques and students in a control group. Differences are investigated regarding: (1) the effects of the techniques taught on students’ attitudes towards writing including their writing enjoyment and self-beliefs in completing writing tasks and their engagement in the planning stage of the writing process, (2) the effects of the techniques taught on students’ performance in terms of their scores on content, organization and number of ideas generated, (3) students’ continued use of the techniques taught when not specifically required in a test condition. Participants are 110 first year non-English majors who were randomly assigned to control, mind mapping and outlining groups. Pretest-posttest between-group and explanatory sequential mixed methods designs were employed in which quantitative data were collected followed by the collection of qualitative data. In the first phase of this study, pretest and pre-treatment questionnaire and posttest and post-treatment questionnaire were administered at the beginning and end of the six-week treatment period to reveal the effects of pre-writing techniques on students’ writing attitudes and engagement in planning and their writing performance. In the subsequent phase of this study, the regular mid-term test occurring two weeks after the treatment period ended was used as the transfer task to explore students’ actual uses of the techniques taught in a high-stakes condition. A subsequent comprehensive interview was carried out to explain factors influencing the transfer. Extreme-case sampling was used by which the highest gainers and lowest or no-gainers in the pretest and posttest, and the users and non-users of the techniques during the transfer task were intentionally selected to be the interviewees.</p>
<p>The results showed that both mind mapping and outlining improved students’ performance on content and organization, yet only outlining had positive effects on students’ writing enjoyment and self-efficacy. With respect to students’ writing performance, both the outlining and mind mapping groups performed significantly better on most aspects of writing over time. On the other hand, the control group’s score on organization decreased and their scores on other aspects of writing did not significantly increase over time. The outlining group performed significantly better than the mind mapping group in terms of their scores on organization and number of ideas included in the writing compositions. Furthermore, the changes in writing attitude over time were different between groups. Although the three groups’ attitudes were essentially the same at the beginning of the treatment period, the outlining group reported significantly more positive attitudes than the mind mapping group at the end of the treatment period. Over the treatment period, the mean writing attitude score of the mind mapping group decreased. Additionally, a significant main effect of time indicated that students’ mean levels of engagement in planning significantly increased over time. There was also a significant main effect of treatment. The outlining group’s level of engagement in planning was significantly higher than that of the mind mapping group regardless of when it was measured. Moreover, more students used outlining compared to the number of students using mind mapping in their timed writing task without the teacher prompting to use either of the techniques taught.</p>
<p>The findings suggest that more time and effort may need to be given to training students with metacognitive strategies that require higher-order thinking. Although students might face inevitable challenges when they start to apply mind mapping, both outlining and mind mapping can be effectively used to better the quality of writing. While outlining can be used to directly generate ideas, mind mapping is helpful in selecting the strongest ideas and organize them in a logical way. This research gave insights into the effects of mind mapping and outlining as pre-writing techniques on students’ writing attitudes and performance. Not only did the results of this study contribute to the theories and practice of the process writing approach and self-regulated learning in writing of EFL learners, but they also supported further research in the field of strategies to deal with L2 writing difficulties which is an important issue for students attending universities in local contexts and overseas.</p>