تاثیر استفاده از راهبرد نقشه ذهنی بر مهارت درک خواندن فراگیران خارجی زبان انگلیسی

the present study sought to investigate the impact of using mind-mapping technique instruction on female elementary efl learners reading comprehension; it also investigated their attitudes towards using mind-mapping technique as a tool to improve their reading comprehension. this study followed a quasi-experimental design with two intact groups as experimental, and control groups. the participants of the experimental group and control groups were 36 and 30 female students respectively at hakiman institute of higher education, bojnourd. the participants were first-year university students majoring in business management. during one semester, they took two placement tests (general & reading comprehension), one pretest, and two posttests. the mind mapping-based teaching was introduced as the treatment to the experimental group. also, a likert-type questionnaire was given to the participating students to explore their attitudes towards the use of mind maps while reading. oral interviews with ten participants of the experimental group were also conducted to gain further insights into the perceptions of participating students. the quantitative data of two placement tests, a reading pretest, and two reading posttests (the first without mind map & the second with a mind map) were analyzed using mann-whitney u and wilcoxon tests. in the qualitative part of the study, to analyze the questionnaire’s data, the mean score of each item was calculated and then the frequency and the percentage for each item were given. the data of the interview were also transcribed and analyzed via a cross-case analysis and the frequencies of the common responses for each item were calculated. based on the findings, the effectiveness of the treatment was confirmed by the quantitative data. further, the students’ responses to the questionnaire items indicated that their attitude towards using mind-mapping technique to improve reading comprehension was positive. in addition, the findings of the oral interview also revealed that all the participants enjoyed this technique, and nearly all of them agreed with the fun nature of mind maps, but about half of them liked to design mind maps on their own.