THE EFFECT OF USING COMPUTER-BASED GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS ON WRITING: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Using graphic organizers as a technique is considered one of the techniques that is considered effective in helping students organize their writing and motivate them to learn. The study investigated the effectiveness of graphic organizers as an intervention to improve discourse structures in sentence and syntax formation. The effect of graphic organizers was assessed by comparing spontaneously argumentative essays and sentence-combining skills from pre- to post-test in four weeks. The participants included students and teachers from a rural school in Lebanon. Each week the students were given a topic, and after being discussed, they took a pre-test, explaining the graphic organizer and filling it and then took a post-test. The pre and post-test scores were analyzed numerically and statistically to determine the effectiveness of such intervention in producing higher test results and improvements. The study found that graphic organizers had significantly enhanced students’ writing abilities including CLDs and SLDs students and produced higher test results. These results suggest that a graphic organizer can be an effective tool to use in the writing process to produce sentences in an argumentative essay encompassing a more complex structure of syntax and discourse.