Abstract:

The ability to accurately comprehend complex texts is widely regarded as a prerequisite to professional success in many fields. However, it is a daunting challenge for many learners of a second language. One effective method to facilitate the understanding of essential concepts and the relationships between key concepts is by creating concept maps. As Novak (1990), Novak and Cañas (2008) and others have pointed out, creating concept maps facilitates a participants' learning process by organizing and structuring new knowledge in relation to their previously acquired knowledge. Concept maps work "as a kind of template or scaffold" (Novak & Cañas, 2008, p.7) by visually displaying networks of interrelated concepts that enable students to trace the evolution of their thoughts.
This presentation will outline the pedagogic application of a multimodal activity that combines different collaborative and communicative modes (group concept maps and oral presentations) that expedite a deeper understanding of complex academic texts for non-native-speaking students of English. It will illustrate how the simple task of creating concept maps can be extended into more dynamic, interactive activities by using erasable magnetic sheets to create larger and more synthesized group maps. The result of this collaborative work is then communicated to other students in short group poster presentations.
The presenters consider the “collaborative” nature of this activity to be one of the key factors in facilitating students’ attainment of a deeper understanding of complex academic texts. Confronted with the common goals of clarification and comprehension, students have to defend or relinquish their erroneous interpretations of a text through challenging dialogues that resolve in a collaborative modification and integration of ideas: they engage in “interpsychological” dialogue (Vygotsky, 1978, p.57) with their peers. Overall, the activity requires students to recursively transform their comprehension of the texts into visual and oral representations, as individuals as well as members of collaborative groups.
The survey conducted after the activity showed that the majority (96%) of the students considered the activity to be instrumental in deepening their comprehension of the text.

Keywords:

Concept map, collaborative, interactive, reading comprehension.