Concept maps are organisations and visual representations of knowledge. They show the relationships between concepts or ideas, or rather in the case of language learning, between the lexical items that you have chosen. Each word or phrase has a shape drawn around it, and then the shapes are joined with arrows. The nature of the link is often written on the arrow.
Concept mapping obliges students to think about the characteristics of a word or phrase and how it might be related to other words or phrases. Like with the other Thinking Skills strategies mentioned, it is intended to go beyond just the meaning of the word and requires students to use grammatical terminology to explain and justify the links that they have made. It has elements of both classification and odd one out in that students are looking for the links between words.
Concept mapping is ideal for pair or group work, and is useful for checking students' understanding of grammar and structure, and any misunderstandings they might have.
Have a look at the group of words at the top of this post. How would you link them together in a concept map? This is a possible arrangement:
Excellent work. Mapping new concepts, particularly about sentence formation and usage, is the key to learning a language.
ReplyDeleteThat’s very unlikely. The key to learning a language is hearing and reading it while interacting with it. Talking about the language is of marginal use. Not to say that concept mapping has some value.
ReplyDeleteLike everything, I'm not saying this is a magical solution to all our problems, and something we should be doing every lesson. It's merely another tool for your box that you may want to use as appropriate.
ReplyDelete