An Application Of Mind Mapping To English Writing In The Suburban Junior High School

According to English Curricular Standards in the Phase of Compulsory Education,junior school students should be able to achieve comprehensive English abilities through the process of learning,i.e.,students should develop the abilities of listening,speaking,reading writing and viewing at the same time.Writing,as an important part of the comprehensive English abilities,is the most difficult part for Chinese students.Due to the higher standard of senior high school enrollment test,students need to improve their English writing abilities to get higher scores.However,current English writing teaching in the suburban junior high school is unsatisfying.Students are not interested in English writing;teaching methods are traditional and the improvement of students’ writing has been one of the most difficult problems for most English teachers.As a result,the author applies the mind mapping to English writing in a junior school in Nanjing.The research questions are divided into three.What’s the effect on their writing content after the application of mind mapping to the junior school in suburban areas?What’s the effect on the coherence in discourse after the application of mind mapping to the junior school in suburban areas?What’s the effect on their writing ability after the application of mind mapping to the junior school in suburban areas?The author divided two parallel classes into experimental one and controlled one.The experiment lasted nearly one semester.The experiment uses the following research instruments including questionnaires,and writing pre-test and post-test to collect data and analyze them to prove the research hypotheses.Before the experiment,the questionnaires about writing interests,attitudes,habits and obstacles are handed out.According to the results of questionnaires,the students’ confusion in writing was found.In the experimental class,mind mapping to the English writing is applied.After one-term experiments,and the analysis of the data,the author can reach the following conclusions.With the help of the application of mind mapping,students’background information about related topic will be activated and thus the writing content will be enriched.What’s more,students have learned how to use transitional expressions appropriately,so their compositions are more coherent.Besides,Mind Mapping can broaden the extent and depth of writing and provide writing materials and outlines for students so that the writing level of students is improved.However,there are still some limitations of the research.For example,the subjects are only chosen from two classes,the number of the whole subjects is rather small.These limitations influence the universality of the research.Thus,the author will do further research.