Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of

Graphic Organizers

Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order

Thinking Skills through the Use of Graphic Organizers

GILBERT C. ALVA
Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

Background of the Study

The ability to communicate effectively is one of the most important life skills students

need to acquire personally, socially, and more so professionally. Correct practice makes

perfect which means that teachers must provide learners with effective teaching strategies and

the right avenue to learn and apply principles of correct and meaningful oral communication.

Learners must develop oral language competence based on fluency, clarity, and sensitivity, to

advance themselves intellectually and communicatively which is most effective when they

are able to apply critical thinking or other higher order thinking skills in communication.

Higher Order Thinking Skills or known as HOTS has been one of education reforms

based on learning taxonomies where students are able to transfer their knowledge into actual

use through problem-solving, analyzing, evaluating, imagining and making connections,

amongst many other strategies. In an effective language lesson, students should be spending

as much time using these strategies as they are learning new vocabulary and grammar rules.

Without them, they may know a lot of language, but be unable to use it in a meaningful way.

For a language based, HOTS can be defined in a number of different ways, but many

educators split them into 4 groups. First is the Application which involves problem-solving

and experimenting like experimenting with rhyming and syntax in poetry writing, solving a

mystery using clues, and performing role-plays. Second is Analysis which is comprised of

identifying patterns and organizing ideas where students can identify language structures in a

text in order to work out the rules for it, without the teacher simply presenting it. The third

group is called Synthesis and engages the students’ imagination and ability to predict or infer.

Students should be predicting the end of stories before they read them, trying to infer the

hidden meanings behind the author’s words and imagining other stories happening in the

same fantasy worlds. The final group, ‘evaluation’, covers the skills of assessing, comparing,
Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

and judging merit. Participating in discussions and debates, rating study strategies, and

assessing their own work all help students to hone these abilities (British Council, 2018).

According to Pakiti (2018), higher‐order thinking skills go beyond simply

memorizing information such as grammar rules and words. It involves developing logical

steps to work through language tasks, assessing the situation or context in which they are to

complete a task, finding a solution to a problem and making judgments of their own

performance through monitoring, evaluating, and reflecting on their thinking or performance.

Higher‐order thinking skills should be considered an integral part of ongoing language

learning and development.

One of the teaching strategies to enhance higher order thinking among students is the

use of graphic organizers. It provides students with a great way to frame their thoughts in an

organized manner. By drawing diagrams or mind maps, students are able to better connect

concepts and see their relationships. This will help students develop a habit of connecting

concepts.

Graphic organizers are some of the most effective visual learning strategies for

students that can be applied to foster a myriad of educational objectives. They are also

sometimes referred to as knowledge maps, concept maps, story maps, cognitive organizers,

advance organizers, or concept diagrams. Charts, webs, concept maps, mind maps, stack plots

and Venn diagrams are some of the types of graphic organizers used in visual learning to

enhance thinking skills and improve academic performance on written papers, tests and

homework assignments. They can be used for a variety of educational purposes, including

sequencing events, analyzing cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, and developing

concepts in detail (Inspiration Software Inc, 2018).

Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

The main purpose of a graphic organizer is to provide a visual aid to facilitate learning

and instruction. Studies show that using graphic organizers improves student performance in

retention, reading comprehension, student achievement, and critical thinking skills. It allows

students to remember information better and can better recall it when it is represented and

learned both visually and verbally. Students with and without learning disabilities improve

achievement across content areas and grade levels and when students develop and use a

graphic organizer their higher order thinking and critical thinking skills are enhanced.

The significance and effectiveness of using graphic organizers were already proven in

previous studies. Teachers from different levels have been using this as a teaching and

learning tool that show organization of concepts as well as relationships between them into a

visual format. It is also one of the means in promoting higher order thinking skills. However,

teachers may sometimes struggle to implement higher order thinking skills because they have

the misconception that learners could not perform higher levels of cognition until their

English proficiency is more advanced. HOTS have more to do with the type of activity

presented and how effectively it is scaffolded and much less to do with how much language

proficiency a student has. With the help of visuals, realia, peer interaction, and larger tasks

broken down into concrete steps, language learners can and will perform at all levels of

cognition.

The purpose of this study is to enhance students’ English oral communication skills

and higher order thinking skills with the aid of graphic organizers. Because of the fact that

graphic organizers help the teacher teach complex issues, the success of using it lies on the

pedagogy and how it was applied and executed based from the lesson and learning objectives

of the subject. Thus, it aims to determine the effectiveness of graphic organizers as used by

teachers in their instructional strategies in promoting oral communication skills and higher

order thinking skills.

Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

Purposes of the Study

The study aims to promote English oral communication skills and higher order

thinking skills by using graphic organizers. Specifically, the objectives of the study are the

following:

1. Determine the students’ English oral communication skills;

2. Identify the students’ higher order thinking skills;

3. Discover what English oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills of

the students needed improvement;

4. Identify effective instructional strategies teachers use in enhancing English oral

communication skills and the ways in which the use of graphic organizers help the

students in their learning while fostering higher order thinking skills;

5. Assess the effectiveness of using graphic organizers in promoting English oral

communication skills and higher order thinking skills;

6. Develop students’ English oral communication skills higher order thinking skills

through graphic organizers and higher order thinking skills; and

7. Devise lesson presentations, activities, and assessment in English oral communication

that promote higher order thinking skills through graphic organizers

Scope of the Research Plan

The study is confined to exploring the effectiveness of using graphic organizers in

promoting English oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills. The aspects

looked into are the English oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills of the

students that needed improvement, the instructional strategies teachers use in enhancing

English oral communication skills and the ways in which the use of graphic organizers help

the students in their learning while fostering higher order thinking skills.
Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

The investigation will be conducted among Grade 11 students and Oral

Communication teachers of Gulang-gulang National High School - Ibabang Talim in Lucena

City during the first semester of the scholastic year 2018-2019. The study is limited to two

classes of Grade 11 students; one class for the experimental group and the other one for the

control group. To meet the objectives of the study, a pre-test and post-test and field

observation from the selected classes will be administered by the researcher.

Conceptual Framework

Independent variables

Level of students’ English

oral communication skills
and higher order thinking
skills Dependent variable

Effectiveness of graphic
Instructional strategies in organizers in promoting
enhancing English oral English oral communication
communication skills skills and higher order
thinking skills to students

Teachers’ pedagogical
practices using graphic
organizers to improve oral
communication skills and
foster higher order thinking
skills
Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

The research paradigm of the study shows that the effectiveness of using graphic

organizers to promote English oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills is

dependent on the level of students’ English oral communication skills and higher order

thinking skills, strategic practices teachers use in teaching the subject, and the ways in which

the use of graphic organizers help the students in their learning. Further, the effective

instructional strategies and the successful use of graphic organizers can greatly influence

students’ oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills.

Using graphic organizers

Students must be aware on the type of graphic organizer used for the discussion or

activity. They must be given time to practice using various graphic organizers properly.

Graphic organizers may be used when taking notes about new information in a lesson to

organize ideas, after reading a book to organize the plot, when comparing and contrasting two

concepts, as a way to help students classify new information into meaningful categories,

finding similarities and differences by creating analogies and as a brainstorming tool to

generate ideas before students begin an assignment, such as a writing task, a set of word

problems, or gather ideas or formalize procedures. Graphic organizers may be evaluated

using generic rubrics based on the learning goal or objectives of the lesson.
Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

Strategies to promote Higher Order Thinking Skills

Higher-order thinking is not simply an educational venture. In order to develop into a

successful citizen in the 21st century, students must be able to think critically and solve

problems. At the high school level, the future is at the forefront of each student’s mind.

Spending as much time as possible at the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy will take

learning to a whole new realm of relevancy.

Students must understand the importance of using higher order thinking skills and

understand their own strengths and challenges. They must be encouraged to ask questions or

answer it themselves, or have them save the question until the following day. They must learn

how to connect one concept to another, usually what they already know with what they are

learning. Teachers must teach students to infer by giving “real-life” examples. They can also

use a step-by-step method for solving problems. This way of higher order thinking will help

them solve problems faster and easier.

Creative thinking is when students invent, imagine, and design what they are thinking.

Research shows that when students utilize creative higher order thinking skills, it indeed

increases their understanding. Therefore, they must be taught to think “Outside of the box.”

Higher-order thinking requires students to really understand a concept not repeat it or

memorize it. Furthermore, Question-Answer-Relationships, or QARs, has been found to be

effective for higher-order thinking because students become more aware of the relationship

between the information in a text and their prior knowledge, which helps them decipher

which strategy to use when they need to seek an answer.

Enhancing oral communication skills and higher order thinking skills through graphic

organizers
 Promoting English Oral Communication Skills and Higher Order Thinking Skills through the Use of
Graphic Organizers

Having great communication skills can be one’s ticket to success. In language

classrooms, oral communication requires students to be good in speaking, listening, reading,

writing, and presenting. Teachers’ instructional strategies have a vital role to play in this

acquisition. They may use graphic organizers to present activities for pair or group outputs

depending on the learning objectives and outcomes of the lesson. Using graphic organizers is

one of effective instructional and learning strategies that can be used across grade levels and

subject areas, and can accommodate a range of student differences. Instructional strategies

that promote higher order thinking skills and enhance communication skills are cooperative

learning, group discussion, role-playing, film viewing, videotaping, reflective learning, group

presentations, and the like. These types of activities can make of use of graphic organizers to

help students understand the task being given. Students can use these cognitive organizers to

generate ideas, record and reorganize information, and see relationships. This will make

students make student thinking visible as they make student thinking audible through other

activities.