knowledge; they can also become independent learners, which is the goal of education.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Motivation and Background

English is widely used in the world; for example, information in science, technology and other academic or nonacademic fields are mostly communicated in English. As a result, it is important to develop EFL/ESL students’ English abilities.

Based on Huang and Tzeng’s investigation (2000), for high-English-proficiency learners in Taiwan, improving reading ability has become fundamental in the improvement of the other three skills. Moreover, most English examinations in Taiwan, such as the entrance examinations, focus heavily on reading ability. Thus, developing students’ English reading ability has become a very important and challenging task for English teachers in Taiwan.

Through reading, students can explore the unknown world to broaden their

knowledge; they can also become independent learners, which is the goal of education.

As Chang (1991) points out, first year students in senior high schools should be taught what reading is so that they may become good readers and they can read on their own.

However, most students in senior high schools encounter difficulties and feel frustrated when reading English. In addition, they can’t get as much pleasure from reading English as from reading Chinese (Chang, 1991). This is probably due to Chinese students’ learning styles. Chinese students tend to break down reading texts into sub-sections for decoding; words and phrases may be interpreted without reference to the rest of the sentence (Sharp, 2002). In short, students can not apply reading strategies appropriately and depend too much on the bottom-up strategies when reading, which causes failure in overall understanding. In Huang and Tzeng’s study (2000), however, many high-English-proficiency participants did use skimming strategies in reading and read extensively. In other words, these

high-English-proficiency participants employ more top-down reading strategies, and

engage themselves in macro reading (Magliano & Millis, 2003). They read more for the gist, the topics, or main ideas, than bottom-up strategies, like grammar, vocabulary, or sentence patterns.

Still, many factors account for L2 students’ reading difficulty; for example, lack of background knowledge and an inability to access it, unfamiliarity of text

organization structures, limited vocabulary and etc (Chang, 1991; Jau, 1997).

Therefore, teaching reading strategies to students is important as it may help students overcome their reading difficulties, and improve their reading comprehension. What’s more, it also helps develop students’ reading ability and train them to become

independent learners. One promising strategy, which has been proved as an effective technique in teaching reading comprehension, is semantic mapping strategy. In many studies, participants in the semantic mapping group score significantly higher than the control group on tests of recall and/or reading comprehension of both expository and narrative texts (Alvermann, 1981; Armbruster, Anderson, & Meyer, 1991; Avery &

Baker, 1997; Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989, El-Koumy, 1999; Jau, 1997; Johnson &

Pearson, 1984; Kuo, 2003; Lipson, 1995; Reutzel, 1986; Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, &

Berg, 1984; Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, & Morgan, 1986).

Through nods and links, the semantic map presents the main idea, secondary categories, and supporting details of a text as a tree diagram, and shows the

relationships among them (Hanf, 1971; Kuo, 2003; Lipson, 1995; Pearson & Johnson,

1978; Sinatra et al., 1984). In the tree diagram, the ideas at the higher level represent

the more important meanings than those at the lower level. Thus, the main idea is

located on the first level, with the secondary categories on the second level, and then

the supporting ideas on the third or lower level. Such a representation presents the

hierarchical network of a text graphically and also shares the same features with

Meyer’s (1975) top-level text structure, which has been viewed as an important factor

in reading comprehension (McGee, 1982; Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980; Raymond, 1993; Taylor, 1980).

In addition, semantic mapping as a reading strategy incorporates many of the aspects of Communicative Language Teaching, which has been employed in the EFL teaching context widely (Zaid, 1995). As a pre-reading strategy, semantic mapping comprises brainstorming to activate student’s background knowledge and build readers’ prediction about the material to be read. As a during- or post-reading strategy, semantic mapping motivates students to select, organize, and integrate the new and the old information. This synthesis of information leads to “meaningful learning”

(Mayer, 1984) and improves reading comprehension.

Based on the advantages of the semantic mapping mentioned above, it is worthwhile to instruct the mapping strategy to senior high school students in Taiwan to improve their English reading comprehension and assist them to be independent readers. Therefore, the present study, a seventeen-week semantic mapping instruction, is conducted to the first-year senior high school EFL students in Taiwan to evaluate its effects on reading comprehension.

Significance of the Study

Semantic mapping strategy has been used widely in an L1 context, including as a strategy to improve vocabulary development and reading comprehension of all levels of learners (Alvermann, 1981; Avery & Baker, 1997; Johnson & Pearson, 1984;

Lipson, 1995); a means to improve the teaching of study skills (Hanf, 1971; Heimlich

& Pittleman, 1986); a means to teach critical thinking skills (Lim, Cheng, Lam, &

Ngan, 2003; Raiziene & Grugaite, 2005); a link between reading and writing instruction (Sinatra, Stahl-Gemake, & Morgan, 1986) ; and as an assessment

technique (Rafferty & Fleschner, 1993). However, its effects as a reading strategy on

EFL students’ reading comprehension are seldom explored. Therefore, it is

pedagogically necessary to conduct the present study to investigate the effect of semantic mapping strategy on senior high school students’ reading comprehension.

The results will provide empirical evidence to the effects of semantic mapping instruction on EFL learners’ reading comprehension.

Moreover, semantic mapping strategy also has been employed successfully with direct instruction in previous studies (Carrell et al., 1989; EL-Koumy, 1999; Jau, 1997;

Kuo, 2003; Lipson, 1995). Direct instruction, which contains instructor’s model and learners’ practice and application, is considered effective with readers, particularly with lower English proficiency readers (Baumann, 1983; Berliner, 1981). Also, semantic mapping instruction gave rise to positive effects on students’ reading comprehension when students’ independent application was involved (Berkowitz, 1986; Carrell et al., 1989; Jau, 1997). Thus, the present study, incorporating direct instruction and students’ independent application into semantic mapping instruction, will substantiate the previous studies.

Moreover, the present study also aims to investigate the participants’ attitudes toward the mapping instruction, including their feedback on using the semantic map and their willingness to use it. Such an investigation will also offer those who are interested in semantic mapping instruction and reading strategies to evaluate the effects of semantic mapping strategy from the perspective of learners.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of semantic mapping instruction on reading comprehension among senior high school EFL students and their attitudes toward the instruction. The research questions are addressed as follows:

1. Does semantic mapping strategy help participants in the experimental group

improve their reading comprehension? Which reading proficiency group (high or

low) benefits more from the semantic mapping instruction?

2. Do the difficulty level and the structure of the text (well-organized vs.

less-organized) influence the effects of semantic mapping strategy on the participants’ reading comprehension?

3. What are the participants’ responses toward the use of semantic mapping strategy in reading instruction?

Organization of the Study

Following this chapter, the related literature on the basic concepts of semantic map, the effects of the semantic map on reading comprehension, and the related empirical studies on the semantic map will be discussed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three presents the experimental design of the present study, including the participants, instruments, procedure, scoring, and data analysis. In Chapter Four, the major

findings and discussions of the study will be presented. Chapter Five concludes with

pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research.