Vietnamese Students' Perspectives towards Using Graphic Organizers on Reading Comprehension Skills

Abstract

Numerous educators and scholars have cited graphic organizers (hereafter GOs) as instructional tools that are highly recommended for use in contemporary classrooms. A graphic organizer is a visual and graphical representation of the relationships between facts, terms, and/or concepts in a learning task. Additionally, graphic organizers are referred to as knowledge maps, concept maps, storey maps, cognitive organizers, advanced organizers, and concept diagrams. The purpose of this study was to ascertain students' perceptions of the effect of GOs on their reading comprehension abilities. Fifty freshmen in two reading classes of a private university in Ho Chi Minh City who were undertaking the English Preparation Course with the reading skills took part in this study. In order to understand students' perceptions of the use of GOs on reading comprehension, quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed in a survey and a post-interview. The findings indicated that students found GOs practical and helpful for improving their reading comprehension skills and other abilities such as summarizing the long texts, comparing and contrasting two concepts or notions, especially their critical thinking skills in questioning themselves. Also, some recommendations regarding the assessment scheme and how to use GOs more effectively in the learning process were offered by students to increase the potentially actual value of GOs for the EFL students in reading comprehension skills as well as in their future majored course.