Effectiveness of Group Cognitive Mapping as a Post-reading Strategy in Korean High School English Classes

Mapping strategies have been widely used in teaching content-based reading. Cognitive mapping uses diverse shapes and forms according to the types of learning materials, which mappers find useful in teaching various types of reading materials included in Korean school English textbooks. This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate whether the cognitive mapping strategy enhances students’ reading comprehension and imagination. The participants were 59 students from a high school in a metropolitan city in Korea. During the course of a semester, the participants, in groups, were asked to summarize the reading passages of the textbook into images and text on a poster at the end of each unit. The written feedback from the students, four interviews, the teacher’s observation notes, and the students’ posters were then analyzed. The results showed that the strategy helped the students retain the obtained knowledge longer and recall it with greater ease. Students’ creativity was found to have been facilitated in the process of turning mental text into images and organizing them on a poster. This study also found that this strategy is effective in promoting students’ collaboration skills and communicative competence. For better use of this strategy in the classroom, teachers are advised to consider students’ individual differences before forming groups.