Week 3 - Question 4

4. After reading part of the article "Graphic Organizers in Reading Instruction" by Jiang and Grabe (2007), explain what the questions are in GOs research in your own words (p. 35). Also, according to Jiang and Grabe, what are the merits of GO instructions suggested by researchers (p.35)?
 
   The author states some issues about GOs research in the article. First, the matter is that the result of use of GOs is depend on how experiential is the inquiry. Indeed, they provided not only the effectiveness but also contradictory findings of use of GOs. Second, the definition of GO and how to outline the GOs are vary. Students are instructed with very different patterns of GOs.  Thus, it is hard to say which kind of GOs is most successful. Third, as research of use of GO for L2 students, it should be paid attention how GO works on their reading skill, especially when they read heavy and complicated reading. However, the amount of research with L2 students is still small. Finally, a term of instructing GOs should be long-term because the effect is expected from constant studies for long time. But most research of use of GOs were limited to a few hours or a few weeks. It is too short to determine the student's reading progress.
  The author also describes some benefits of use of GOs in the article. The use of GOs help the reader to know the text structure, which is important to understand and memorize contents, because GOs show them the relationship among ideas and the structure of essay. Jones, Pierce & Hunter say," a good graphic representation can show at a glance the key parts of a whole and their relations, thereby allowing a holistic understanding that words alone cannot convey."(Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues)