Innovation in Language Learning

Writing still presents a big challenge for many students at the university. As teachers, we feel the responsibility to find new ways to improve this skill among other skills. Teachers, in the process of teaching writing need strategies and technologies that can attract the students' interest and render the task of writing more enjoyable. To this end, Mind Mapping, a technique developed by Tony Buzan (1960s), has proved to be a promising instrument for the teacher and the learner alike. This classroom action research discusses the implementation and adaptation of Mind maps in the writing course. It aims at comparing the writing performance of two groups who were given a writing exam. One of the groups was taught the writing course in the usual way while the second was taught to use the technology of Mind mapping during the stage of pre-writing. The results show that both groups still have problems related to the use of vocabulary, spelling, grammar and punctuation among others. However, at the level of the organization of paragraphs and providing the thesis statement, the group who was taught to use mind mapping performed significantly better than the other group.

Keywords: prewriting, writing, mind mapping, teaching, ICT, comparative study