AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PERCEPTIONS ON USING MIND MAPPING TECHNIQUE AMONG THIRD- AND FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

Abstract

Mind Mapping, which was developed by Tony Buzan as a visual tool to improve note-taking, creativity and develop ideas, has many benefits to the process of learning. The piece of research was conducted to investigate the perceptions among students in the third and fourth year on using Mind Mapping at University of Foreign Language Studies – the University of Danang. The data were collected from the questionnaires with 150 students at the Faculty of Language Teacher Education and Faculty of English for Specific Purposes at University of Foreign Language Studies – the University of Danang via the use of qualitative method, which finds out that students use Mind Mapping technique for various purposes of learning and planning ranging from revising the previous lesson and improving its permanence to preparing presentation or projects. Besides, students perceive Mind Mapping as a useful learning strategy and most of them enjoy using Mind Mapping for learning. Although there are some problems during the learning phase such as being hard for brain or being difficult for others to understand, the findings show that Mind Mapping is still an effective technique that students should apply in learning English. To deal with the difficulties in using Mind Mapping technique, students, teachers and even the university take crucial parts in being aware of how to activate Mind Mapping in learning English among students as well as combine it with other approaches such as cooperative learning to motivate them.