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	Title of article:	Improving on the mindmap: domain networking
	Author(s):	Kent Hill
	Issue and year:	IATEFL Issues 184, April-May 2005
	Category:	Language teaching skills
	Country:	japan
	Author contact:	kentokun@inter.net
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My issue is twofold: the first is with graphic organizers such as mind maps; the second is with current process-writing methods. The well-intentioned thinking behind mind maps is that they involve starting with simple, main ideas and getting deeper in. But because the beginning of a mind map is a word with a circle around it, which then has lines branching out from it, I suggest that this process does not get deeper in but gets more disperse—and loses focus. 
Additionally, mind maps are text-based. In actuality, however, language and the mind (where the writing process occurs) are more complex than just text. There is an important cognitive and conceptual basis to both as well. It is more likely that thought begins within broad cognitive domains and takes its own perspective from within them. Therefore, though text-based methods help students to accomplish the writing process, teachers could be doing more to assist students to organize their thinking and produce quality writing. 
Secondly, writing textbooks often introduce different kinds of process writing (i.e. comparison, descriptive, narrative, cause and effect, and opinion) but they do not show how to combine them into a coherent essay; nor do they show how they are related to cognition or how combining them can create a thesis statement. 
Consequently, in an effort to resolve these issues, a socio-cognitive-based approach to essay writing was developed: domain-blending and domain-networking. Socio-cognitive learning (Hill 2004) is an approach to teaching, which combines socio-cultural theory (Lantolf 2000) and cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987). 

Indeed, considering the brain has a billion neurons and each neuron has ten thousand synapses, simply drawing a circle around a word with some lines coming from it and calling it a ‘mind map’ seems a bit of a misnomer, if not a mediocre use of metaphor or figurative language. A more accurate reflection of the organization of cognition would have to have at least four domain networking levels—prototypes, spatio-temporal, causation and social roles (MacWhinney 1999). Domain blending underlies these levels by re-evaluating the comparison and contrast essay in a new cognitive context. Normally the comparison is literal, but domain blending involves the use of metaphor and metonymy as basic, comparing and contrasting, meaning-making functions (Fauconnier 1997).
Descriptive prototypes
The typical descriptive essay requires students to describe an object from either a subjective or an objective perspective. This ability to view an object in a very basic way is similar to the cognitive construct of prototypes, or best examples. It is noun-based and can be divided into subordinate, basic and super-ordinate categories. This domain has a mainly word-level focus and the grammar that emerges in students’ writing is often determiners or inflections, for example, singular or plural. 
Narrative spatio-temporal relations
The most important part of a narrative essay is the plot. Typically, the plot develops in four stages: background, conflict, resolution and ending. These four stages are also important to the organization of cognition. To develop the necessary sequence of actions, this domain incorporates spatio-temporal reference frames. It is activity-based and has a triangular deictic dimension between a speaker—an object—and an environment-centered frame. Temporal relations are also perceived using these three analogous frames, and the perspective matches up with the tense or aspect in the sentence. 
Causation or cause and effect
The third level is sentential and is the one that is most centrally involved in the emergence of grammar. This is the system of causal action frames, which allows us to understand the action and centrality of a verb from the perspective of the subject, namely, SVO and transitivity. By understanding the interrelation in the chain of the cause and effect relationship along with a spatio-temporal prototypical basis, students’ writing may start to show the structure of reason and logic.
Social roles and opinions
The final cognitive level allows for the adoption of the socio-cognitive perspectives of other human beings. This cognitive level has many similarities to various genres of social interaction such as giving opinions, persuasion, and argument. In terms of its linguistic reflexes, this system involves more salient features of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. 
Conclusions
After giving students a topic (e.g. ‘The future of …?’ or ‘The perfect …?’), I ask students to try to write five or six examples for each of the four levels and then to choose their favorite from each domain. By combining their favorite from each into one grammatically correct sentence, they then have their thesis statement. In one class, I asked half the students to use the domain-networking matrix and the other half to use a mind map and I found that students using the matrix more often included elements from it in their thesis statement than those who used the mind map.
Each of these domains establishes a partial cognitive reflection of the entire human being; combined, they offer a more accurate map of the mind. Language expresses the integration of advanced conceptual thinking from these four cognitive domains, creating metaphoric and figurative language to form narrations, develop social relations and produce good writing. With this in mind, this short paper has argued for a more psycholinguistic basis for the teaching of writing.
References
Fauconnier, G. 1997. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, K. 2004. ‘Quantum leaps in language learning’. In M. Swanson and K. Hill (eds.). JALT 2003 Conference Proceedings. 
Lantolf, J. 2000. Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
MacWhinney, B. 1999. ‘The emergence of language from embodiment’. In B. MacWhinney (ed.). The Emergence of Language. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

kentokun@inter.net

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