The effectiveness of using semantic mapping strategies in helping students in their writing skill / Nooraya Mohd Azali

Semantic mapping is one of the strategies that have been suggested to be an effective pre-writing activity, which can help to improve students’ writing skill. The general aim of this study therefore is to find out the effectiveness of semantic mapping strategy in improving student’s language learning in the areas of writing, in elaborating and organizing ideas.
The study begins with the background of semantic mapping, the different types of semantic maps and different findings from previous research in writing. It is important to get a clear picture of how effective semantic mapping strategy is used in writing especially in the Malaysian classroom context. The instrumentation used is a sample test before and after using the mapping strategy and questionnaires are given to check the students’ reaction towards the strategy.
The findings show that there are improvement in the students writing skills in organizing and elaboration. The chosen students, time constrain and also the questionnaires are the limitations in conducting this research and it may not give the true picture in the result but it helps in giving the researcher to see the effectiveness in using mapping strategy to help students in organizing and elaborating their ideas in writing skill.