USING CONCEPT MAPPING AND STORY MAPPING STRATEGIES TO OPTIMISE JUNIOR SECONDARY II STUDENTS’ SELF-ESTEEM AND PERFORMANCE IN NARRATIVE WRITING IN BENUE STATE

This study investigated the use of concept mapping and story mappingstrategies to optimise junior secondary II students’self-esteem and performance in narrative writing in Benue State. A pre-test, posttest quasi experimental design was used. A population of 2, 254 junior secondary II students in Makurdi from which a sample size of 143 junior secondary II students was randomly drawn from four intact classes located in four government owned UBE secondary schools in Makurdi; where, two intact classes of 70 students were treated with story mapping strategy while the other two intact classes of 73 students were treated with concept mapping strategy. Two research questions guided the study while two hypotheses were tested at the significance Alpha level of 0.05. The instruments used for data collection were Self-Esteem in Writing Questionnaire (SEWQ) and Students’ Writing Performance Test (SWPT). The instruments were trial tested using cronbach’s Apha and the reliability coefficient of 0.64 was obtained for SEWQ while 0.76 was obtained for SWPT. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer research questions while analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at significance. The findings of the study revealed that concept mapping and story mapping strategies were equally effective in improving students’self-esteem in essay writing (0.920.05) but concept mapping strategy enhanced students’ writing performance better than story mapping at 0.0030.05. No significant difference in the mean self-esteem ratings of students taught writing using concept mapping and story mapping were observed. However, findings also showed that there was significant difference in students’ performance in writing. It was recommended that, concept mapping and story mapping should be used to teach narrative writing but priority should be given to concept mapping strategy since it enables students to perform better in writing.