VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN HOÀI THƢƠNG

IMPROVING STUDENT'S WRITING SKILLS THROUGH MIND
MAPPING TECHNIQUES: AN ACTION RESEARCH ON FIFTH
GRADE STUDENTS AT AN ENGLISH CENTRE IN HA NOI
(Cải thiện kỹ năng viết của học sinh bằng phƣơng pháp sơ đồ tƣ duy
một nghiên cứu thực nghiệm/ hành động với học sinh lớp 5 tại trung tâm
Tiếng Anh tại Hà Nội)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

HA NOI - 2020


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN HOÀI THƢƠNG

IMPROVING STUDENT'S WRITING SKILLS THROUGH MIND
MAPPING TECHNIQUES: AN ACTION RESEARCH ON FIFTH
GRADE STUDENTS AT AN ENGLISH CENTRE IN HA NOI
(Cải thiện kỹ năng viết của học sinh bằng phƣơng pháp sơ đồ tƣ duy
một nghiên cứu thực nghiệm/ hành động với học sinh lớp 5 tại trung tâm
Tiếng Anh tại Hà Nội)

Field: English Language Methodology
Code: 8140231.01

M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Hoà

HA NOI - 2020


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof.
Nguyễn Hoà, for his invaluable guidance, correction, facilitation and
encouragement in the writing of this thesis.
I wish to express my gratitude to the Dean, the Vice Dean and all the
staff of the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and
International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their priceless
wisdom, encouragement, help and kindness during my study and writing this
thesis.
My thanks go to the language center, which supports me to carry out
this research project.
Finally, I want to thank my family, my friends for their spirit,
encouragement and their support. Without them this thesis couldn‟t have been
accomplished.

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DECLARATION
I, Trần Hoài Thương, declare that this thesis is the results of my own

research and has not been submitted to any other university or institution
partially or wholly. Except where the reference is indicated, no other p‟s work
has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis.
Supervisor

Student

Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Hoà

Trần Hoài Thƣơng

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ABSTRACT
The students of fifth grade at a Center in Hanoi saw writing as
challenging skill to develop. As a result, from the interviews and observation,
I figured out that the learners had some issues related to content and text
arrangement. When the students had writing assignments, they spent long
time on thinking. They wrote slowly, and they saw it challenging to identify
ideas to write. Furthermore, they also did not know how to structure those
ideas to produce proper texts. Consequently, they made short and
incomprehensible texts.
With respect to these problems, I have decided to employ mind
mapping as technique to improve writing skills of students at a Center in
Hanoi. Using mind map tool, students were exposed to the flow of writing, to
the overall organization and to the language characteristics of narrative
writing skills. Results from this action research project indicates some
improvements in their writing skills and generally a positive attitude toward
the intervention.

Keywords: Mind mapping, Teaching Techniques, Narrative writing,
Writing Process, Improvement

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TABLE OF CONTENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... i
DECLARATION .............................................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iii
TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................... iv
TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................... vii
LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................ viii
LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................... ix
LIST OF APPENDICES ................................................................................... x
Chapter I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1
1.1. Background and Rationale of the study ................................................. 1
1.2. Aims of the study ................................................................................... 2
1.3. Research questions ................................................................................. 2
1.4. Significance of the study ........................................................................ 3
1.5. Scope of the study .................................................................................. 3
1.6. Research methods................................................................................... 4
1.7. Structure of the thesis. ............................................................................ 4
Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................... 5
2.1. Defining writing and writing skills ........................................................ 5
2.1.1. Writing and writing skills ............................................................... 5
2.1.2. Narrative writing skill ..................................................................... 8
2.1.3. Teaching writing to young learners ................................................ 8
2.1.4. Teaching and the learning cycle of writing................................... 13
2.1.5. Assessing writing .......................................................................... 13

2.2. Mind-mapping definition ..................................................................... 14
2.2.1. Mind mapping ............................................................................... 14
2.2.2. Mind mapping techniques ............................................................. 15
2.3. Previous studies into using mind mapping techniques ........................ 19
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2.4. Chapter summary ................................................................................. 21
Chapter III: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................... 22
3.1. The context of the research .................................................................. 22
3.2. Timeline of the research. ...................................................................... 23
3.3. Research method .................................................................................. 23
3.4. Participants ........................................................................................... 26
3.5. Data collection instruments .................................................................. 26
3.5.1. Pre-test and post-test ..................................................................... 26
3.5.2. Classroom observation .................................................................. 27
3.5.3. Guided Interview ........................................................................... 27
3.6. Data analysis ........................................................................................ 29
3.6.1. Assembling your data.................................................................... 29
3.6.2. Coding the data ............................................................................. 29
3.6.3. Comparing the data ....................................................................... 29
3.6.4. Building meanings and interpretations ......................................... 29
3.6.5. Reporting the outcomes ................................................................ 30
3.6.6. Quantitative data analysis ............................................................. 30
3.7. Procedures of the research ................................................................... 31
3.7.1. Identifying the problem ................................................................. 31
3.7.2. Carrying out the real classroom research ...................................... 31
3.7.3. Doing evaluation ........................................................................... 31
Chapter IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................ 32
4.1. Planning a change ................................................................................ 32

4.2. Research findings ................................................................................. 37
4.2.1. Cycle 1........................................................................................... 37
4.2.2. Cycle 2........................................................................................... 41
4.3. Discussion ............................................................................................ 46
4.3.1. Discussion of the pre- and post-test .............................................. 46
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4.3.2. Discussion of the cycles ................................................................ 48
3.3.4. Findings from the intervention ...................................................... 51
Chapter V: CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 53
5.1. Summary .............................................................................................. 53
5.2. Limitations ........................................................................................... 54
5.3. Suggestions .......................................................................................... 54
5.3.1. For the teacher ............................................................................... 54
5.3.2. For the students ............................................................................. 54
REFERENCES ................................................................................................ 56
APPENDICES .................................................................................................... I

vi


TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviation Full name
RQ

Research question

AR


Action research

AT

Associate teacher

EFL

English as a foreign language

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Writing process ............................................................................... 9
Figure 2.2. The process wheel (Harmer, 2004, p. 6) ...................................... 10
Figure 2.3. Mind-map about writing process taught to the students............... 12
Figure 2.4. A student‟s mind map about animal ............................................. 15
Figure 2.5. A narrative writing form ............................................................... 18
Figure 3.1. The action research spiral (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 19) ............... 25
Figure 4.1. The narrative writing of a student in the pre-test exam ............... 35
Figure 4.2. Writing working sheet sample ...................................................... 42
Figure 4.3. The mind-map drew by a student in class about the topic ........... 44
Figure 4.4. The narrative writing of a student in the class in the post-test. .... 45
Figure 4.5. Comparison between the Pre-Test marks and post-test marks ..... 47
Figure 4.6. Change in the marks of the students, comparison between pretest and post-test ............................................................................ 48

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Research procedure and timeline ................................................... 23
Table 3.2. Data collection instruments............................................................ 28
Table 4.1. Problems identified prior to the action research (AR) ................... 33
Table 4.2. Descriptive analytic of the marks of the students in the pre-test .. 36
Table 4.3. Descriptive analytic of the marks of the students in the posttest ................................................................................................. 46
Table 4.4. Problems identified before the action ............................................ 48
Table 4.5. The improvement ........................................................................... 52

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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Pre-test and post-test results .......................................................... I
Appendix 2: Teacher pre-interview ................................................................. II
Appendix 3: Teacher post-interview ............................................................... IV
Appendix 4: Lesson plans ................................................................................ V
Appendix 5: Classroom observation field notes sample ................................. IX
Appendix 6: The rubric ................................................................................... XI

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Chapter I:
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the background to, and rationale of, the problem
and the reason for choosing the topic. I spell out the aims and the significance
of the study. The final section will present the scope of the study which shows
the number of participants and the time of the intervention.
1.1. Background and Rationale of the study

English plays an important role in today‟s world. It is an international
language broadly used around the world. To have a good command of
English, students should learn and be competent in all skills including
listening, speaking, reading and writing.
According to Brown (2000, p. 217) “For more than six decades now,
research and practice in English language teaching has identified the four
skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing as paramount importance”.
Such four skills are a measuring benchmark on proficiency of learning
English. Among those skills, writing has a very crucial position in effective
communication. As agreed by Richards and Renandya (2002), among other
skills, writing is seen as the key one and the most difficult skills for students
to master.
Despite its important role, the opportunities for available for practicing
and developing writing skill, are hardly sufficient. Most English teachers pay
inadequate attention to writing as it is not included in the National School
Leaving Exam. Further, there has been some recognition that writing is seen
to be challenging skill to study. Many reasons have been disclosed on why
writing skill is the challenging skill for students. Essentially, according to
Harmer (2004), in case of spoken language, it is naturally acquired as children
are exposed to it, but the ability to write has to be purposely learned. Whereas
learners study writing, it takes time and a teacher to teach them. Time is
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demanded as writing engages many phases including brainstorming, noting,
planning, drafting, editing, and proof-reading (Spratt, Pulverness, &
Williams, 2005).
At the center where the researcher works as a teacher with the fifth-grade
students, they saw writing as a challenging skill to study. From the interviews
with the learners, and my personal observation, the researcher found out that the

they had some problems related to content and textual organization. When the
students had writing assignment, they spent long time thinking. They wrote
gradually, and they saw it challenging to identify which ideas to write about.
Furthermore, they also did not know how to structure their ideas textually.
Consequently, they made short and incomprehensible texts.
With respect to this problem, the researcher has decided to employ
mind mapping as technique to improve writing skills of students at a language
Center in Hanoi. Using mind map tool, the students were exposed to the flow
of writing, to the overall organization and to the characteristics of text forms.
Furthermore, it helped them to present their opinions and made it easier to
organize those thinking into logical structure. Mind mapping techniques can
also make it beneficial for students who find it difficult with traditional ways
of teaching writing (Peterson & Snyder, 1998).
1.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this study is to understand to the impact of mind mapping
on writing skill development for the fifth-grade learners at my center.
Following are the research question of this study.
1.3. Research questions
This research project aims at answering the following research
question (RQ):
To what extent can mind mapping improve fifth grade students’
writing skills?
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On answering this RQ, the researcher focused on the following issues.
The first is to find the improvement in students‟ writing skill at a language
center in Hanoi through mind mapping. Secondly, the research is to find the
phenomenon that takes place when the teacher teaches writing through mind
mapping. The third, the research is to evaluate the strengths and the

weaknesses of mind mapping techniques in teaching writing.
1.4. Significance of the study
By undertaking this action research project, the researcher hopes to find
out more about the impact of mind-mapping on developing writing skills, and
hopefully, the results of this study can be transferrable to other contexts.
1.5. Scope of the study
This study was conducted in a language Center in Hanoi, where the
researcher works as a teacher of fifth grade cohort. Part of my job is to teach
them narrative writing. There are many problems in Vietnamese children‟s
learning English that need researching, however, writing is of the productive
skill and it is of essential importance to the development of a language
learner. In writing, although there are also various problems at different stages
of learning which can be classified into linguistic, psychological, cognitive,
and pedagogical categories (Hyland, 2003), this project focuses on mainly on
the linguistic and psychological domains of learning writing. They struggle
with the structural components of writing formats, the command of
vocabulary, and the students‟ participation in the classroom are the focus of
this present study.
Methodologically, there are a lot of methods to help children improve
writing skills, the focus of this project is limited to using mind mapping
techniques proposed by (Buzan, 2003, 2013; Buzan & Buzan, 2003) for the
development of narrative writing skills.

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1.6. Research methods
The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of mind
mapping into writing skills, therefore action research is an appropriate
approach to examine the students‟ improvement and the researcher herself

can get involved in that development. In this research both qualitative and
quantitative data were gathered. The qualitative data came from the classroom
observation and interviews with the associate teacher (AT). The quantitative
data came from the pre- and post-test.
1.7. Structure of the thesis.
This thesis consists of five chapters.
Chapter 1 - Introduction represents the rationale for the study, the aims
to which the study is conducted, the research questions, the scope, the
significance of the study, and the design of the study.
Chapter 2 - Literature reviews provides the definitions of the key terms,
and the previous studies related to the study as well as the gaps in the field
which inspire the researcher to conduct this project. This chapter also looks at
the advantages and disadvantages of mind-mapping technique in the activities
of learning and teaching writing.
Chapter 3 - Methodology describes the action research cycle, the
context of the study, the data collection methods and data analytic framework.
Chapter 4 - Findings presents the findings and the discussion of the
findings.
Chapter 5 - Conclusion summarizes key findings, the contribution of
the study, some limitations of the study. Recommendations for further
research are also offered

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Chapter II:
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter shows the literature review, related researches and
conceptual framework. Literature review discusses the theories relevant with
the researched topic. Researches which are related to this study are also

shown. Whereas, conceptual framework examines the connection of the
theories with the research.
2.1. Defining writing and writing skills
2.1.1. Writing and writing skills
According to Spratt et al. (2005), writing is one of the constructive
skills. While people write, they create language rather than just getting it. This
process relates to communicating a note, generating symbols on a page and
transfer to readers. Moreover, they also have to be clear about what messages
they would like to communicate and how they are communicating the
messages. These facts will impact on what they write and how they prepare
for that. In this connection, Harmer (2004) comments that writers should
understand the target audience that they are writing for. This will support the
writers to conclude on what to communicate and how to communicate.
Besides, writing needs to follow step by step. Those comprise brainstorming,
drafting and revising.
Written language is clearly known as a kind of graphic representation
of spoken language, writing needs distinctive course of competence and
writing requires a process, it is an outcome of brainstorming, drafting and
revising (Brown & Lee, 2015).
Same as any other skills, writing includes some particular skills that are
generally known as micro skills and macro skills or so-called sub-skills. They
are used to determine what can be seen as good writing. It means that these
conditions are employed to evaluate writing of students.
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There are many sub-skills for writing as agreed by Spratt et al. (2005).
The first is accuracy. According to the authors, “Accuracy is about using the
correct forms of language such as spelling correctly, forming letters correctly,
writing legibly, punctuating correctly, choosing the right vocabularies, using

grammar correctly, joining sentences correctly, and using paragraph
correctly”. The second is relating to convey a message successfully to other
people and in order to achieve this result, the writer must have enough ideas
and structure them in good manner. The third is that they also have to show
their ideas in proper way.
Brown (2004) also separates skills of writing into micro-skills and
macro-skills. The micro-skills are suitable for simulated and comprehensive
kinds of writing assignment, whereas the macro-skills are vital for the
successful expertise of comprehensive and reactive writing. They are the
micro-skills and macro-skills of writing in accordance with Brown (2004).
There are a number of written results. As categorized by Brown (2004),
those written results have four types of performances. This type is divided
from the most fundamental skill to the most complicated skill.
The first kind is simulated writing. From the beginning level, students
have to gain skills in the fundamental tasks of writing. They would comprise
writing words, letter, punctuation and very brief sentences. Under this level,
students are expected to be capable of spelling accurately and obtaining
phoneme grapheme correspondences under English spelling system. The key
point of this phase is that context and meaning come into interest.
The second category is comprehensively or frequently named as
monitored writing. It consists of the skills in generating proper words under
the context, collocations and idioms; and fix grammatical features to reach the
length of sentence. Most examination tests for comprehensive writing are
strictly monitored by the test creator or the teacher. Hence, this category of
6


writing will not permit learners to employ their creativity. A general form of
monitored writing is written grammar works. Students are provided with a
paragraph with a defined tense and they are to change the tense. For instance,

students might be asked for altering all present tense verb into past tense. One
of other kinds of this task categories are sequencing jumbled vocabularies into
meaningful and good sentences and depicting a clear figure with a short
sentence. In this regard, the meaning and context are very critical for defining
accuracy and correctness, however, most tasks stress on form more.
The third kind is reactive writing. In this category, students are asked to
produce at a restricted level in connection of sentences into a paragraph and
generating logically connected order of two or three paragraphs. The tasks are
known as reactive writing as students correspond to training instruction,
course of conditions, structures, and other guidelines. Under features, students
start to apply their creativity to show their opinions in varied types. In
addition to focus on dialogue tradition, this kind of writing also stresses on
type at the conservation degree, with a strong focusing on context and
meaning. Shapes of tasks that exist with reactive writing are paraphrasing,
growing topic within a paragraph, compiling lectures, and explaining graphic
or flat data.
The final category is comprehensive writing. Comprehensive writing
means successful controlling of all processes and strategies of writing for all
objectives, reaching to the length of a narrative writing, a term paper, a major
research project report or even thesis. The emphasis of comprehensive writing
tasks is gaining the objective of writing, arranging and developing opinions
logically, applying details to help or describe ideas, and in most cases,
involving in the process of diversified drafts to accomplish a final product.
Dissimilar with stimulating and monitored writing, the emphasis of
grammatical shape is limited in this form of task.
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2.1.2. Narrative writing skill
Definitively, narrative text correlated with one of text classes in

training language in primary school. Additionally, narrative text is a text that
presents a story. According to Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary
(Deuter, Bradbery, & Turnbull, 2018), narrative is about describing events,
exceptionally in a novel or act, course of skill of telling of story. Narrative
writing pertains a clear order of events that happens over time (Graesser,
Singer, & Trabasso, 1994). Our understanding of narrative writing skills is
consistent with the early composition writing skills of children, the
organization of students‟ writings, the text generation or vocabulary usage
(Babayiğit & Stainthorp, 2010).
In this research, the researcher employs mind mapping in writing
narrative text. For example, in the Coursebook - Write Right 2 - used for this
research, the students are asked to write about a summer vacation (Unit 4, pp.
30-37). Mind mapping is appropriately used to maximize students‟ narrative
writing skill in this research because Nurlaila (2013) proved mind mapping is
highly effective in this form of writing.
2.1.3. Teaching writing to young learners
Writing, like reading, is an “unnatural” act with the purposes for
writing, and to say why writing is an important educational tool (Nunan,
2011). When working with young learners, it is important to remember that
along with learning how to write in English, they are refining their oral
language skills, and depending upon the age, beginning to develop written
language skills in their native language. If students don‟t have writing skills in
their native language, they most likely won‟t have them in their second
language. Teachers of young learners should never underestimate the value of
native language literacy (Linse & Nunan, 2005, p. 98).

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It is real that how well a student‟s final product evaluated up against a

list of condition is still the interest of teachers. Nevertheless, nowadays
teachers could see the benefit of placing students as the maker of language,
letting them to stress on content and message, and placing students‟
individual basic purposes at the learning center. Hence, what is now named
the process way to writing instruction remains on developing.
According to Harmer (2004), the process of writing is the steps a writer
goes through to create final written forms. The process may be influenced by the
writing content, the kind of writing, and the medium it is written in. Nation
(2009) claims that writing process help students to perceive the dissimilar
perspective of writing. The writing process is categorized into some phases.
Spratt et al. (2005) recommends the phases of the writing process as follows.
Brainstorming
Composing notes
Planning
Writing a draft
Editing
Creating another draft
Proof reading

Figure 2.1. Writing process
Nation and Newton (2009) interpret the phases of writing process in different
definition. The first processes are assessing the objectives of the writers and
having frame of the reader. When the writers/students understand the reason
why they write and to whom they write for, it would be simpler for them to
accommodate the information with the approach of showing it. The second
9


process is compiling opinions. This process could be completed by merely
motivate students‟ sense to discover a topic or by replying the questions of

who, why, where, when, and how. The third process is arranging opinions.
Occasionally, in which few students are to write with a provided topic, the
opinions consisted do not contrast significantly from one to another, but the
methodology is structured can increase uniqueness to the piece of writing. To
arrange the opinions, students could line up the ideas in line with a useful
condition or to divide the opinions into group. The fourth process is changing
ideas into written text and followed by reviewing the text. Reviewing on what
has been written is vital for students because they could check what opinions
have already been covered, be able to remain the agreement and progress of
the writing, quicken further opinions, and find out for mistakes. Let the
reviewing become easier, students could use the checklist comprising points
to review in their writing. The final process is editing. It engages in going
back over the writing and changing to its structure, style, grammatical and
lexical accuracy, and suitability. The processes specified above do not
inevitably happen in a determined sequence. Some students may love to
regularly review what they write, editing it, and undertaking with the writing.
Harmer (2004) also has his own notion about the process of writing. The
process is presented in the „process wheel‟.

Figure 2.2. The process wheel (Harmer, 2004, p. 6)

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Harmer (2004, pp. 4-5) explains the four main elements as follows:
Planning
In this phase, students must make decision on what they are going to
produce. There are three key problem to deal with. The first one is the
objective of their writing. The language they apply, the information they
select, and the kind of text would be founded on the target of writing. The

second issue is about the target audience. The kind of audience will influence
the form of writing and the selection of the language, for instance, it is formal
or informal form. The third problem is correlated with content format. It
consists of how to arrange the facts and choose which dispute and opinions
they would like to produce.
Drafting
The first writing could be known as a draft. Students could create
several drafts as the writing process gets into editing. Creating drafts boost
students to figure out what writing manner is the best and to make decision
which dispute and opinions they literally want to cover.
Editing
For editing phase, there are process of giving back and revising. In
mirroring, students could go through their drafts and they may discover
mistakes in their writing, for examples the information is not apparent, the
paragraph is not structured well, and there are grammatical mistakes.
Occasionally, other readers supported to perform the reflection. They would
give judgment and recommendation to get the best revision.
Final Version
The next step after students have made revision that they see to be
necessary, they will come with the final version. The final version might be
dissimilar from the first draft but is available to be shown to the target
audience.
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The writing process depicted above works if students are writing mails,
texting for their friends, writing diary note, or presenting compositions for
their English teachers. The degree which students give attention to different
stages of the process will greatly rely on the kind of writing, the medium
employed, the content and the length of the piece, and for whom students are

performing it.

Figure 2.3. Mind-map about writing process taught to the students

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2.1.4. Teaching and the learning cycle of writing
The language learning approach employed asks for an accompanying
approach which could allow students to grow the knowledge and skills to deal
with spoken and written texts in social context. The most efficient approach
for conducting a text-based syllabus is the type-based methodology.
In line with Feez and Joyce (1998), the method gives some benefits.
Firstly, type-based method permits a student to work together with other
students and teacher. It is in conjunction with assumptions that language
learning is a social activity and the process of learning language is a course of
framed developmental stages. In order to study language efficiently and to
understand meaning of the language, students have to learn language via
using social activity and with the framing from teacher. Secondly, the method
equips students with specific knowledge about language. In the starting of
learning process, the teacher supports students to create their background
knowledge. Hence, students could determine what is to be studied and what is
to be evaluated.
2.1.5. Assessing writing
In recent years, English as a foreign language (EFL) writing has started
to play an important role in EFL/ESL research, and complexity has become a
salient construct to assess and investigate EFL writing performance and
development (Cristina & Martínez, 2018). This present research employed the
analytic rubric which is an adapted version of Bachman and Palmer (1996).
We contributed a fifth sub-domain to Bachman and Palmer‟s criterionreferenced rating scale for the assessment of writing ability. This addition was

driven by context-specific considerations. The end product is a five-point
scale with five sub-domains of writing ability: content, cohesion, syntactic
structures, vocabulary, and mechanics of writing. Within each domain, there
are several well-defined standards of performance points that each rater
understands (see Appendix 2).
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