The document discusses the use of concept mapping and text analysis as tools for enhancing the writing skills of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students, particularly in articulating arguments. It highlights various interventions, including the use of cmap tools, to help students visually represent and critique the structure of texts, leading to improved writing strategies and outcomes. The findings support the incorporation of cmap tools in writing instruction, emphasizing their effectiveness in revealing rhetorical structures and facilitating better argumentation.

1. Writing Research Across Borders III
Concept mapping and
text analysis
-a composite tool
for EAP writers and mentors
Lawrie Hunter
Kochi University of Technology

2. Problem: argument block
Engineering EAP PhD students have
trouble articulating their arguments.
Factors
1.The structure of an engineering RP is
not the structure of an argument.
2. Continuous text does not reveal
rhetorical structure.
3. Teaching argument leads poorly to
abstraction skill.

3. Intervention 2:
Use Cmap Tools
-force articulation of
relations between
core content elements
(The link relations are only
communication moves verbs
from argument discourse.)

4. Study 1: interventions 1 and 2
Map
source
text
Critique
the map
Make a
consensus
map
Write a
summary
from map
Results
Lack of rhetorical awareness led to the
inclusion of background information in
summaries.
Absence of visual metaphors led to
narrative order confusion.

5. Intervention 3: identify core text

6. Intervention 4:
Institute visual metaphors
abstract
overarching
more important
less important
concrete
subordinate
more salient
rhetorical
flow
argument
direction
less salient
passage through time
cause-effect

7. Study 2:
Instruction
in text
analysis
interventions 3 and 4
Map
source
text
Write a
summary
from map
Results
Core content dominant in summaries;
sentence order much better.
Some learners extended the process to a
second text analysis for further abstraction.

8. Reflection
Teachers of writing:
-built-in bias against
low-text work?
Outreach: just ask me!
Whatever
Lawrie Hunter
you need.
I love to help.
Kochi University of Technology
http://www.core.kochi-tech.ac.jp/hunter
http://lawriehunter.com

9. Concept mapping and text analysis: A composite tool for EAP writers and mentors
This presentation demonstrates how a low text representation of the content of text can reveal
rhetorical structure or orchestration (or their absence). It also argues that Cmap representation can
have a valuable place in the writing center toolkit.
Cmap representation has gained a wide usership, particularly in science education, thanks to the
popularity of the freeware Cmap Tools. Cmap Tools forces the user to label each link between two
nodes with a phrase specifying the relation between those nodes. As well, applying several visual
metaphors (e.g., up is abstract, down is concrete; up is overarching, down is subordinate) can make
the representation even more compressed. This presents an altogether more powerful representation
than mind maps.
This presentation reports several cases of fruitful application of Cmap Tools, wherein EAP learners of
academic writing discovered intellectual leverage in mapping. In each case the learners drew
constrained maps of the content of a text (academic or popular genre), critiqued their maps, arrived at
consensus on an accurate mapping, and then set out to write a new version of the text based only on
the content of the map.
In each case the subsequent work was rich regarding writing strategy and proactive use of tools. The
learners developed their own approaches, cycling between moves analysis and concept mapping as
they worked to unpack text that they had initially identified as 'good models'. In each case too the end
product was significantly closer to the target form.
The observations made here point to numerous applications in EAP writing, and suggest that the Cmap
deserves a place amongst the essential tools for EAP instruction and writing center work, being of
particular use in the analysis of source texts where the identification of rhetorical orchestration is
difficult; where argument is often masked by other rhetorical devices; and in situations where one's
thinking about an approach to a problem is complex and difficult to encode directly in extended text.

10. Concept mapping and text analysis: A composite tool for EAP writers and mentors
This presentation demonstrates how a low text representation of the content of text can reveal
rhetorical structure or orchestration (or their absence). It also argues that Cmap representation can
have a valuable place in the writing center toolkit.
Cmap representation has gained a wide usership, particularly in science education, thanks to the
popularity of the freeware Cmap Tools. Cmap Tools forces the user to label each link between two
nodes with a phrase specifying the relation between those nodes. As well, applying several visual
metaphors (e.g., up is abstract, down is concrete; up is overarching, down is subordinate) can make
the representation even more compressed. This presents an altogether more powerful representation
than mind maps.
This presentation reports several cases of fruitful application of Cmap Tools, wherein EAP learners of
academic writing discovered intellectual leverage in mapping. In each case the learners drew
constrained maps of the content of a text (academic or popular genre), critiqued their maps, arrived at
consensus on an accurate mapping, and then set out to write a new version of the text based only on
the content of the map.
In each case the subsequent work was rich regarding writing strategy and proactive use of tools. The
learners developed their own approaches, cycling between moves analysis and concept mapping as
they worked to unpack text that they had initially identified as 'good models'. In each case too the end
product was significantly closer to the target form.
The observations made here point to numerous applications in EAP writing, and suggest that the Cmap
deserves a place amongst the essential tools for EAP instruction and writing center work, being of
particular use in the analysis of source texts where the identification of rhetorical orchestration is
difficult; where argument is often masked by other rhetorical devices; and in situations where one's
thinking about an approach to a problem is complex and difficult to encode directly in extended text.