Impact of i-think Maps on the flow of ideas and writing performance of year five pupils / T. Gewa S Thuraisingam

T. Gewa , S Thuraisingam (2020) Impact of i-think Maps on the flow of ideas and writing performance of year five pupils / T. Gewa S Thuraisingam. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of i-think Maps on the flow of ideas and writing performance of Year Five pupils. The use of i-think Maps as a cognitive tool enables pupils to activate and illustrate their flow of ideas in the i-think Maps templates during the planning and editing stages of the recursive process of writing. A total of 28 pupils participated in this pre experimental: one group pretest post-test study where treatment lessons using four i-think Maps were carried out for 10 weeks. The qualitative aspect of this study focused on structured interviews, classroom and i-think Maps observations and document analysis. Paired sample t-Test was used to determine the mean differences of the pre-test and post-test scores using the SPSS program quantitatively. There was a suggested significant difference in the scores for the pre-test (M=7.71, SD=5.643) and post-test (M=10.47, SD=5.196); conditions t(27)= -9.295, p = 0.000 which explains that the results were significant at 1%. Since this study was based on non-randomized selection of one class of pupils without a control group, other extraneous variables such as self-motivation and input from private tutors, parents or siblings may have also contributed to the increase in the flow of ideas and consequently, the post test scores. However, on the whole, this study confirms past studies on the positive influence of using i-think Maps in enhancing pupils’ writing skills. There are definitely pertinent pedagogical implications in employing i-think Maps for facilitating flow of ideas and writing performance. As the increase in the post–test scores is exclusively representative of the 28 participants of this study, further study on the impact of i-think Maps in ESL writing using two groups of randomly selected pupils over a longer period is recommended to establish more conclusive results of using i-think Maps in the English Language classroom.

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