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Concept mapping can be used as a pre-writing strategy for the satisfaction of the above two requirements. A concept map is a graphical map visualizing the relationship among concepts. The concepts are enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and the relationships between concepts are indicated by a connecting link and arrow (Novak & Canas, 2008). As a pre-writing activity, concept mapping encourages students to “map out” their ideas before writing. And at the initial stage of concept mapping process, students are expected to focus more on their memorized vocabulary and cultural knowledge related to the given topic, rather than on complete sentence structures. The further concept mapping activity has students feel less concerned about making mistakes, and provoke students to develop ideas, words, concepts or statements on a writing topic.Thus students get a clearer and detailed image of what they are going to write in their compositions.
Some researches have found that concept mapping technique as a pre-writing strategy is of vitality in helping EFL learners’ writing process and ultimately make improvement in final
compositions, for concept mapping activates relevant knowledge stored in their memory and scaffold cognitive processing by help EFL learners make it clear the relations among words and ideas (Lee, 2007 ;Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002). However, some limitations of traditional paper-and-pen way of concept mapping have been pointed out. It is a time-consuming , laborious thing and sometimes even lead to frustration for students. Plus, it is evidently inconvenient for students to make revisions and for teachers to give feedback on a hand-drawn concept map (Schau et al, 2001; Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2001)
In modern technology times, computerized concept mapping appears to be a key solution to the limitation of traditional hand-drawn concept maps. In comparison with paper-based maps, computerized concept mapping facilitates the process of construction and revision ; what’s more, students can return to previous steps of their concept map construction if regret about the revisions made (Liu, Chen, & Chang, 2010; Reader & Hammond, 1994) .
Moreover, some researches have applied computer software to their experiments of concept mapping and found it resulting in positive effects among learners (Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2002; Chu, Hwang, & Huang, 2010; Panjaburee, Hwang, Triampo, & Shih, 2010; Simone, Schmid, & McEwen, 2001; Sturm & Rankin-Erickson, 2002).
However, few researchers have shown much interest in applying the technique directly to EFL English writing instruction. None of the previous research has indicated the influences of different concept mapping treatments on different writers’ writing performance. In this research, the author takes learners’ writing proficiency and different mapping treatments into account to investigate the effects of computerized concept maps on different learners. The research questions are:
1. What are the impacts of different computerized concept mapping treatments (no-mapping, inpidual-mapping, and collaborative mapping) on writing performance for learners of different writing proficiency (high-level, middle-level, and low-level)?
2. Does the quality of the computerized concept maps constructed cooperatively exceed the quality of those maps constructed inpidually?
3. Does the map quality correlate to learners’ writing performance?
2. Literature review
2.1 Concept
2.1.1 Definition of concept map
A concept map is a way of representing relationships between ideas, images, or words. In concept maps, nudes are used to represent concepts and conjunctions the relationships between concepts (Novak & Gowin, 1984). Generally, concepts, like ideas, words and information, are put in boxes or circles, and arrows together with lines are used to link the boxes and circles. According to Joseph D.Novak , the father of concept maps, there are mainly five elements in a concept map: concept, relationship, level, connection lines and conjunctions, crossing connection lines. Respectively, concept means common rules in objects or events; relationships between concepts should be meaningful and valid; level indicates that concepts should go from the one with broadest sense to the most specific one; lines are used to connect different concepts and to mark the significance of the relations between concepts (Carla et al, 2002).