Introduction

1. Concept map: A strategy for enhancing reading comprehension in English as L2. Reinildes Dias reinildes@gmail.com Letters College - Federal University of Minas Gerais - Brazil www.letras.ufmg.br Introduction Methodology Main goal Report on an action-research that was born out of the need to develop students competence to read academic texts in English related to their field of study (articles, abstracts, thesis, dissertations, chapters of books). Rationale Concept maps: the strategy used to empower students to be more effective readers and knowledge creators (Novak, 2010; Novak & Cañas, 2008). CMs are seen as scaffolding for comprehension in English as L2. Development: Learning process Step One: Students’ awareness of the importance of visually displaying information from a text to facilitate interpretation in English as L2. Step Two: Students’ understanding of what a concept map is, its main features and its usefulness for displaying a web of concepts and their relationships on a single surface to aid both general and in-depth comprehension. Step Three: Students’ creation of Concept maps by using the software CMap Tools available for free download at http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/ • Research instruments • Texts chosen by the students concerned with their reading needs. The CMap ool software. Students’ narratives. Analysis of the results Assessment of the concept maps that were created. Students’ narratives on the process they went through during the ESP reading course. Results Results showed that the construction of meaning by the creation of concept maps can be an effective reading strategy in English as an L2. Students’ narratives revealed the positive impact the process of mapping had on reading comprehension. All participants reported that they intend to go on using CMaps to enhance their understanding of English texts. Key Notions • Concept maps. Guidelines for creating CMs. Hypermedia/ Multimodal learning environments. CMap tool. Action-research. Reading comprehension in English Research Method Action research Subjects: eight students from different fields of study (engineering, social studies and language) Context: students taking an ESP reading course to develop their capacities to use English texts as tools for research in their own fields of specialties. The central purpose of education is to empower learners to take charge of their own meaning making (NOVAK, 2010). Visual representations such as Concept Maps will enable them to do so when reading texts in English..