Importance of Mind Mapping in Enhancing the Students’ Writing Skills.

Abstract

This research aims at exploring the importance of mind mapping, as a prewriting strategy, and its positive impact on EFL learning. One could notice that this significant strategy seems to be somehow neglected in the process of writing. The present research tries to come up with some solutions that are supposed to help our students know how to use mind mapping and rely on it each time they write. It is assumed that the academic contexts of writing could give us the opportunity to answer our research questions; consequently, the work opted for a mixed-method approach, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore the problem and develop a detailed understanding of our central phenomenon. Data were gathered through a classroom observation and a questionnaire composed of fifteen questions administered to a sample of 40 first year LMD students of English at Ibn Khaldoun University of Tiaret. The results were convincing, after analyzing the data taken from our questionnaire. Our participants believed that mind mapping was important in their writing process. Most of them agreed it helped them in different levels of writing, in generating, organizing and writing their ideas. Indeed, a great improvement in student’s organization and generation of ideas was clearly seen. Our research has definitely proven that this method is easy, fast and helpful; when taught properly, it helps students write their essays, generate more ideas, and be more organized.