Effects Of Mind Map-Based "Reading-to-Write" Model On Improving Junior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Ability

As language input and output,reading and writing play a vital role in English teaching and learning.The main task of English teaching is to improve students’ literacy and critical thinking skills.As middle school English teachers,we must think about how to combine literacy skills to effectively improve students’ critical thinking ability and ultimately achieve a double win goal.The internal mechanism of listening,speaking,reading,and writing abilities is a kind of thinking activity,and perception,understanding,and evaluation often involve intuitive thinking,logical thinking,and divergent thinking and so on.The process of reading and writing is full of speculative factors.However,in the current English teaching,many teachers do not pay enough attention to the cultivation of students’ critical thinking ability.Separating reading and writing in English class,this model not only weakens students in transforming reading and writing into each other,but also makes students’ reading and writing skills more weak.While these previous studies were either based on mind maps to teach reading or writing,and most of them separated the two kinds of teaching.There are not many studies combining reading with writing based on mind maps,and further research is needed.Considering the current lack of attention to critical thinking ability in English reading and writing teaching in junior high school,this article advocates the use of reading-to-write teaching model.It uses the correlation between reading and writing,supported by input enhancement and output driven hypothesis,integrated reading and writing teaching,and combined the characteristics of critical thinking ability of junior high school students.It takes the three lower levels of critical thinking ability of comprehension,analysis and evaluation ability as the criteria for judging the critical thinking ability of junior high school students.The following research questions are below:1.What impact does mind map-based reading-to-write model have on improving Grade Eight Students’ critical thinking ability?2.How can this mind map-based reading-to-write model promote all the dimensions of the students’ critical thinking ability?In this paper,an experimental study is used to verify the effectiveness of the mind map-based "reading-to-write" instructional model on improving the critical thinking skills of grade eight students.The experimental subjects were 96 students in two parallel eighth grade classes in a middle school in Shenzhen.The experimental class used the "reading-to-write" teaching mode based on mind mapping,and the control class did not involve any form of thinking in the teaching of reading and writing.The research instruments were writing tests and an interview.The processing of the quantitative research data was mainly done using SPSS software for descriptive statistics,independent samples t-test and paired Sample t-test,the analysis leads to the following conclusions:Firstly,the mind map-based reading-to-write teaching model can improve middle school students’ interpretation,analysis and evaluation skills in English writing.Secondly,most students had a positive and affirmative attitude toward the mind mapbased model of reading-to-write teaching,and they believed that this teaching mode can enhance their confidence in reading and writing and develop their interest in reading and writing.They gradually learn to look at things objectively and critically,and know how to analyze and think.It also reflects that the students in the experimental class have generally enhanced their critical thinking skills and selfconfidence,and have a certain degree of persuasive power.Based on the above findings,it suggests that in order to enhance the development of critical thinking skills for junior high school students,teachers can use mind maps in reading and writing class.The combination of mind map and “Reading-to-write”aims to construct a more effective teaching model for middle school English reading and writing.This study also has implications for the development of a more effective teaching model for reading and writing in middle school.The study of English teaching provides a reference significance.However,there are some shortcomings in the study,which need to be further improved and perfected in future teaching practice.