Innovation in Language Learning

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of using collaborative and individual concept mapping as pre-writing activities on EFL students’ persuasive essay writing performance. The sample of the current study was composed of 89 Turkish undergraduate students who were taking ‘English for Academic Purposes II (ENG102)’ course in three different sections at a private university in Ankara. The data was collected during the spring semester of 2016-2017 academic year. The number of female participants was 30 (33.7 %) and the number of male participants was 59 (66.3 %). In this study, one-way analysis of variance was conducted in order to examine the effects of different pre-writing activities which are individual concept mapping, collaborative concept mapping and traditional outlining. The students in the experimental groups were introduced with concept mapping and constructed their own concept maps individually and in pairs, while the students in the control group created traditional outlines before writing their essays. The findings of the current study demonstrated that when used as pre-writing activities both individual concept mapping and collaborative concept mapping promoted students’ essay writing performance.