Using Concept Mapping to Teach Young EFL Learners Reading Skills

Many English as a foreign language (EFL) students fail to be effective readers because they lack knowledge of vocabulary and appropriate reading strategies. We believe that teaching proper reading strategies can help second-language learners overcome their reading problems, especially when the instruction begins in elementary school. Effective reading strategies "provide the means to tackle complex problems in more efficient ways" and allow students to build a "path to comprehension" (McNamara 2009, 34). One effective strategy is "concept mapping," which is the use of visual tools to help readers understand material by transferring "the written content into concrete images" (Liu, Chen, and Chang 2010, 442). Through concept-mapping activities, learners connect previously learned and newly learned ideas onto a visual representation, or "map." Research shows that concept maps have positive effects on children's language skills; for example, Liu et al. (2011) describe how concept mapping "prompts learners to reflect to construct meaning based on their observations and knowledge," thereby helping "students develop and apply the knowledge about storytelling" (873). In this article, the authors describe two reading lessons that use concept mapping to produce beneficial effects for elementary school students.