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INFLUENCE OF CONCEPT MAPPING ON THE PERFORMANCE IF STUDENTS IN LETTER WRITING IN SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN PANKSHIN

 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background to the Study

Writing as a language skill is the most difficult and complicated language skill to master, listening and speaking  tend to come naturally especially in LI situation. One can also be a good speaker but a poor writer, though some people end up writing better than they speak. But only a few people can write as well as they speak. It is therefore necessary to deliberately cultivate the ability to write not just for academic purposes but also for actual life needs. Otagburuagu (2007) recognizes two approaches in writing skill. The product approach focuses on the production of an error-free piece of writing and the process approach emphasizes on the steps involved in the writing task. The two approaches are complementary as writing involves the steps taken to arrived at a piece of writing that is a grammatically acceptable or correct.

Letter writing is a means of communication using print to interact. Interaction involves the writer and the recipient. Nevertheless, technology has exposed the global world to communicate using emails, telephones or social networking sites such as facebook, whatsApp etc. All of these sites have the advantage of immediacy with minimum preparation and organization. A letter allows the writer to weigh matters, plan modalities of approach and persuasion, withdraw rude and hasty statements, refine and sharpen arguments and may after all not send the letter at all, (King 2004).

      Letter writing is a means of passing information between persons. Moreso, it is a request, an enquiry, a demand, a question we make in our daily lives (Banjo, Ayodele & Ndam, 2003). A letter can be formal or informal. A formal letter is confidential and official in its setting; therefore, the language is formal. Whereas, an informal letter is casual in its tone. Both letters have their characteristics and rules and if followed appropriately, the purpose will be achieved.

Various teaching methods are used for instruction in the teaching of English. These teaching methods have been summarized into Expository, Practical or Activity Oriented and Constructivism (Nwokenna, 2010). Expository methods according to Nwokenna (2010) which include lecture method, demonstration, project, field trip and discussion methods. They concentrate on presentation of concepts, facts and principles by the teacher while the students are merely asked to listen and take notes.

These facts and principles are drawn from textbooks based on stipulated contents and cognitive levels within the unit of instruction. The foregoing presents a picture of the use of poor teaching methods used during instruction, which according to Okoye and Okechukwu (2006), may not improve the performance of students in their academic pursuit. The above scenario suggests that the conventional teaching methods used among others have accounted for the persistent poor performance of students in internal and external examinations in English language.

Linguists and scholars have however come to a conclusive agreement as many researches have been on going on how to involve students in the learning process and scholars educators have come up with concept mapping as one of such teaching-learning techniques (Kinechin, 2000 and Markow & Lenning, 2008). According to Canas & Novak (2009) concept mapping are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type and relationships between concepts are indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases specify the relationship between two concepts. Wikipedia, (2022) (the free encyclopedia) defined concept map as a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. It is a graphical tool that designers, engineers, technical writers and others use to organize and structure knowledge. Giving an overview, the Wikipedia encyclopedia describes concept map as a way of representing relationship between ideas, images or words in the same way that a sentence diagram represents the grammar of a sentence, a road map represents the locations of highways and towns and a circuit diagram represents the workings of an electrical appliance. In concept map, each word or phrase connects to another, and links back to the original idea, word or phrase. Concept maps are means of developing logical thinking and study skills by revealing connections and helping students see how individual ideas form a larger whole.

The technique of concept mapping according to Wikipedia encyclopedia was developed by Joseph D. Novak as a means of representing the emerging science of knowledge of student by his research team at Cornell University in the 1970s s. It has subsequently been used as a tool to increase meaningful learning in the sciences and other subjects as well as to represent the expert knowledge of individuals and teams in education, government and business. Concept maps have their origin in the learning movement called constructivism. In particular, constructivists hold that learners should actively construct knowledge.

Novak & Canas (2006) believes that one of the reasons concept mapping is so powerful for the facilitation of meaningful learning is that it serves as a kind of template or scaffold to help to organize knowledge and to structure it, even though the structure must be built up piece by piece with small units of interacting concept and propositional frameworks.

            Learning according to Angelo and Howard (2007) is a complex cognitive process that occurs in individual ages. The learner may have a variable degree of understanding of the new information, at one end of the spectrum and the learner may have virtually no understanding of the new information, this condition is called rote learning. In such a condition the learner acquires information primarily through verbatim memorization. Because the conceptional meaning of the knowledge being memorized is not addressed, the new information cannot be linked to relevant concepts the learner already knows. According to Angelo and Howard (2007)), the outcome of rote learning is that little or no information is transferred into the long-term memory. Citing Novak and Gowin (2004), they opined that the outcome of meaningful learning is that the new information is transferred into long term memory (retained) in a relevant linkage with prior knowledge. As such, meaningful learning leads to long term information retention. The foregoing therefore underscores the need to look into the influence of concept mapping in teaching letter writing and how it enhances the achievements of students in secondary schools in Pankshin Local Government Area of Plateau State.

• Statement of the Problem

Most students in secondary schools do not know what the formal letter looks like. They are just taught about the features of letter writing, the functions and the reasons. But most of them do not have a mental picture of what formal letter writing is all about. This gap in learning affects the learners in both internal and external examinations. These poor performances according to Ajaja (2011) are occasioned by the very poor state of resources for teaching and learning English and the unchallenging environment under which the teaching of English topics takes place. The teacher’s teaching strategy is one of the factors responsible for students’ poor performance in letter writing. This situation therefore calls for a search for the notion that concept mapping makes students to remember information longer and enables them to use this knowledge effectively because it is moved to a long term memory by creating a map of mental image on their minds.

In view of these problems, the researcher has seen the grave need to determine the influences of using concept mapping as alternative technique for the teaching of letter writing in Senior Secondary Schools in Pankshin Local Government Area of Plateau State.

• Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of this study is to examine the influence of concept mapping on the performance of students in letter writing in Senior Secondary Schools in Pankshin Local Government Area. This study sought to achieve the following objectives:

1. To determine the performance of students who were exposed to concept mapping and those who were not exposed to it in bringing out structure of formal letter
2. To determine the performance of students who were exposed to concept mapping and those who were not exposed to it in grammatical usage.

• To compare the overall mean performance of students taught letter writing using concept maps and other teaching techniques.
  • Research Questions

            The following research questions guided the study:

1. What is the performance of students who were exposed to concept mapping and those who were not exposed to it in bringing out structure of formal letter?
2. What is the performance of students who were exposed to concept mapping and those who were not exposed to it in grammatical usage?

• What is the overall mean performance of students taught letter writing using concept maps and other teaching techniques?
  • Significance of the Study

The findings of this study will be of benefit to students, teachers, curriculum planners/developers, textbooks writers, ministry of education and future researchers.

Students will benefit from the findings of this study as the use of concept mapping in the teaching of letter writing will boost their achievement and help to increase their retention of how a letter is written. It will also help them to develop more interest in letter writing and acquire and develop scientific skills which will help them in their career choice particularly those careers geared towards being secretaries, journalists, etc.

The findings of this study will be of benefit to teachers of English as it will help teachers in choosing appropriate instructional methods and materials capable of releasing students’ tension toward the subject. It will motivate teachers to develop interest in utilizing modern instructional material like using concept mapping in teaching letter writing and selecting suitable teaching methods that will be a possible means towards reducing failure in English language.

The findings of this study will also benefit curriculum planners in curriculum planning, as using concept mapping in planning a curriculum on a specific topic like letter writing helps to make the instruction conceptually “transparent” to students. Concept mapping can be utilized in appropriate strategies of curriculum planning such as modification and revision.

The Federal Ministry of Education can also benefit by using the findings of this study to engage teachers and administrators in training programmes that can model this new educational approaches.

• Scope of the Study

This study focused on the influences of using concept mapping in teaching letter writing among secondary school students in Pankshin Local Government Area of Plateau State. Despite the fact that this research is limited in scope to Pankshin Local Government Area, the findings can be generic – it can be generalized to other parts of the country as well.

• Operational Definition of Terms

Influence: A change which is as a result or consequence of an action or other cause.

Concept Mapping: Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts.