Improving reading comprehension skills on a short fictional text using mind maps in a tenth grade foreign language

Abstract

Many foreign language students face challenges in the classroom when dealing with reading comprehension activities resulting in poor school performance. Therefore, this study aims at helping tenth-grade students in a public school located in Santander to improve their reading comprehension skills on a short fictional text by using mind maps as a learning strategy and also to help students become independent and self-directed learners. A pre-test and a post-test, as well as field notes were used to analyze students' usage of mind maps to demonstrate comprehension of a short fictional text. The results of this study showed that students benefited from the teacher's modeling of the mind maps in order to understand a short text because students were able to add more details to their mind maps after the intervention. Furthermore, the evidence indicated that mind maps benefited a student with learning impairment to improve his vocabulary and reading comprehension skills of a short reading text.