CONCEPT MAPPING LATEST TECHNIQUE IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION N

What is Concept Mapping?

Social scientists have developed a number of methods and processes that might be useful in helping you to formulate a research project. I would include among these at least the following -- brainstorming, brainwriting, nominal group techniques, focus groups, affinity mapping, Delphi techniques, facet theory, and qualitative text analysis. Here, I'll show you a method that I have developed, called concept mapping, which is especially useful for research problem formulation.

Concept mapping is a technique for representing knowledge in graphs. Knowledge graphs are networks of concepts. Networks consist of nodes (points/vertices) and links (arcs/edges). Nodes represent concepts and links represent the relations between concepts.

Concepts and sometimes links are labeled. Links can be non-, uni- or bi-directional. Concepts and links may be categorized, they can be simply associative, specified or divided in categories such as causal or temporal relations.

Essentially, concept mapping is a structured process, focused on a topic or construct of interest, involving input from one or more participants, that produces an interpretable pictorial view (concept map) of their ideas and concepts and how these are interrelated. Concept mapping helps people to think more effectively as a group without losing their individuality. It helps groups to manage the complexity of their ideas without trivializing them or losing detail.

Concept mapping can be done for for several purposes:

• to generate ideas (brain storming, etc.);
• to design a complex structure (long texts, hypermedia, large web sites, etc.);
• to communicate complex ideas;
• to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge;
• to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding.

The concept mapping technique was developed by Prof. Joseph D. Novak at Cornell University in the 1960s. This work was based on the theories of David Ausubel, who stressed the importance of prior knowledge in being able to learn about new concepts. Novak concluded that "Meaningful learning involves the assimilation of new concepts and propositions into existing cognitive structures".

Mind Mapping is a popular related technique, invented (and copyrighted) by Tony Buzan in the UK. He describes mind maps as: "a mind map consists of a central word or concept, around the central word you draw the 5 to 10 main ideas that relate to that word. You then take each of those child words and again draw the 5 to 10 main ideas that relate to each of those words."

The difference between concept maps and mind maps is that a mind map has only one main concept, while a concept map may have several. This comes down to the point that a mind map can be represented as a tree, while a concept map may need a network representation.

SURYA PRAKASH

An example Concept Map

Here is an example of a concept map. In this example the nodes are labeled, the links are also labeled and uni-directional.

Uses:

• Develop an understanding of a body of knowledge. Explore new information and relationships. Access prior knowledge. Gather new knowledge and information. Share knowledge and information generated. Design structures or processes such as written documents, constructions, web sites, web search, multimedia presentations.
• Problem solve options. 
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