Mind mapping and block-diagrams in teaching English

From iProjekt

Teaching English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) is one of the most frequent university courses outside USA, UK and Australia. The use of the Internet in teaching ESL is an important theme in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).

At the Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb, Croatia, we used Web 2.0 tools for mind mapping and block-diagrams to create online pedagogical activities that would support grammar knowledge and skills of college students. These activities were performed on the Engwiki website.

For mind mapping the students used Bubbl.us and Mindomo and for block-diagrams/flowcharts the Gliffy tool was used. In fact, the grammar-related online activities were also performed with online cartoon strips (Bubblr), online presentations (SlideSix), and video tagging tool (Veotag).

In the academic years 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 the students were given assignments to explain and illustrate various elements of English grammar (the topics of grammar e-tivities were "Word building & functions", "Phrase", "Syntax", and "Other"/Miscellaneous. For instance, as a result of student online activity the "Acronyms/Abbreviations" word type was illustrated with two different mind maps, a flowchart, an online cartoon, and a tagged video (see first mind map created with Bubbl.us, second mind map created with Mindomo, and flowchart created with Gliffy.