The Effectiveness of Using I-Think Thinking Map in Enhancing the Mastery of Malay Language Essay Writing Skills of Form 6 in Mukah District

Abstract

I-Think thinking map is one of the teaching aids used to improve the thinking culture among students. The use of i-Think thinking map in the teaching and Malay language essay teaching is essential to produce creative and critical thinking students. Therefore, the study aims to examine the effectiveness of using i-Think thinking map in the mastery of non-formatted Malay essay writing skills among form 6 students. A quantitative approach is used in this study by using a quasi-experimental design conducted over five treatments on form 6 students at one of the secondary schools in Mukah Division, Sarawak. Distribution of experimental group and control group is done according to the existing class. The experimental group consists of 20 students and same with the control group. Data were obtained from pre-test and post-test. The data were analyzed using independent and dependent t test. The findings show that there is no significant difference in the writing of non-formatted essay for pre-test of the experimental and control groups. After treatment, there was a significant difference in the level of student achievement in essay writing for the post-test of the experimental group and control groups. Significant differences also exist for students’ achievement in non-formatted essay writing in terms of relevance between pre-test and post-test for experimental group. There is also a significant difference in the development aspect of the experimental group between pre-test and post-test. Post-test mean score is higher than pre-test for both aspects. Significant differences also exist between experimental groups and control groups for relevance and development aspects in post-test. Experimental group mean score is higher than control group. This proves that the use of i-Think thinking map can improve students' achievement in the non-formatted essay writing among form 6 students.