Pisit Jittisukpong
Email: Pisit@tni.ac.th
Journal of Roi Et Rajabhat University
Volume 13 No.2 May-August 2019
Abstract
The article aims at explaining the meaning and relevant factors including procedure in teaching English skills for the Thai EFL learners through the use of semantic mapping. Reading is essential and undeniably one of the most important skills since it helps develop an all-rounded, in-depth person; however, reading skills may be difficult for those who learn English as a foreign language must understand the vocabulary and various sentence patterns of English very well in order to grasp the main point of text being read; there fore, semantic mapping is one teaching method that helps simplify the reading skill. The elements of the semantic mapping should be thought of as geometric shapes and the message of the main idea or details of the story are arrows which represent the directions and connect the main idea. This is a way to help learners see the relationship off the true message; moreover, it helps the students to organize the details in to groups according to the topics. Using semantic mapping, the learner-centered learning process is helpful because it asks the students to participate in building the map of the idea. Consequently, the procedure of semantic mapping is a method which will help learners read English with better understanding and enable them to grasp the main idea of the text by making effective connections of the whole story systematically
Keywords: Semantic Mapping, Teaching English English Reading Skills, EFL
