Using mind maps to reveal and develop genre knowledge in a graduate writing course

Mind maps have an established reputation in education as a means for revealing students' prior knowledge and schema, as well as any changes that occur through instruction and practice. This study, which took place in a credit-bearing, genre-based writing course for graduate multilingual (L2) writers, compared the extensiveness, depth and accuracy of maps created by 47 students before and after instruction for the book review and literature review genres. Post-instruction mind maps showed significant advances in the extensiveness and depth of students' formal textual knowledge, and some evidence of progress in the rhetorical and process dimensions (Tardy, 2009) of their understandings. Students' reflective comments provided support for the view that map construction helped to raise their awareness of textual and rhetorical components of conceptual knowledge, and that it also boosted their motivation and sense of self-efficacy. On the basis of these findings, a number of suggestions are made for using mapping as an instructional tool to improve students' awareness of and ability to synthesise the multiple dimensions of genre knowledge.