Anahita Deylan Salehi, Shahrokh Jahandar and Morteza Khodabandehlou, 2013 investigated the influence of concept mapping on EFL student’s reading comprehension
ability. In their research, they stated that concept maps are visual representations of knowledge which can be employed as a learning strategy by the learners to find the
relationship between current knowledge and new information. This investigation concluded that concept mapping helps educators understand what students know by the
process of externalizing this knowledge; it provides an observable and assessable record of the student’s conceptual schemata and starting knowledge points. It encourages
educator to become open minded and flexible with student ’s various interpretations and
perspectives.
1. Conceptual Framework
The English teacher of SMP BOPKRI 3 Yogyakarta especially of class VIII found out that the students had difficulty in comprehending the texts. They also found difficulty
in predicting the content of the texts because of their limited vocabulary. Therefore, the students had to open their dictionary to find the unfamiliar words meaning. Moreover, the
English teacher only used a course book during the teaching and learning process. The course book was not totally good because the instruction of some tasks had wrong
spelling. Moreover, there was a text that did not provide the right answer from the exercise. On the other hand, there were no interesting activities during the English
teaching and learning process and activities mostly was done reading texts aloud. One of the factors which caused the failure in the teaching of reading in class VIII
SMP BOPKRI 3 Yogyakarta was the activities implemented during the teaching and learning process. The English teacher still depended on the use of course book which
contained monotonous activities. On the other hand, he did not use techniques that might enable the students to improve their reading skill. This problem gave negative
impacts for development of their reading skills. Concerning the nece
ssity of improving the students’ reading skills, the parties
