MINDOMO-ASSISTED MIND MAPPING AS A PREWRITING SCAFFOLD FOR EFL DESCRIPTIVE WRITING: A ONE-GROUP PRETEST-POSTTEST STUDY
Keywords:
descriptive writing; digital mind mapping; EFL writing; Mindomo; prewriting scaffoldAbstract
Planning ideas before drafting is a persistent challenge for learners who write in English as a foreign language. This quantitative pre-experimental study examined changes in descriptive writing performance after Grade XI students at SMAN 3 Teupah Selatan used Mindomo-assisted mind mapping as a prewriting scaffold. Nineteen students from class XI-1 were selected purposively from a population of 140 students. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, students completed an initial descriptive paragraph, participated in four instructional sessions on constructing and using digital mind maps, and completed a posttest. The writing tasks were assessed in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. The available summary data showed that the mean score increased from 46.44 to 77.72, a difference of 31.28 points. The reported mean normalized gain was 57.06%, with individual values ranging from 26.67% to 76.79%. These descriptive results indicate substantial within-group improvement and suggest that digital mind mapping can help learners generate details, visualize relationships among ideas, and use a plan while drafting. The findings do not establish a causal effect, however, because the study had no comparison group, involved a small purposive sample, and did not provide student-level paired scores for an appropriate inferential reanalysis. Further controlled research should examine whether the observed improvement is attributable to Mindomo-assisted planning rather than repeated practice or teacher support.
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