Experimental Research On Cultivating Students’ Critical Thinking Ability With Subject Mind Map ——Take Xinxiang No. 20 Junior High School English Reading Teaching As An Example

Critical thinking is a core element of talent training and a key factor to enhance students’ learning ability as well.It is pointed out in English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education（2021 Edition）that developing students’ thinking ability is an important task of English courses.In the information society,middle school students need to cultivate independent questioning,discrimination,judgment and evaluation of critical thinking ability as early as possible.Junior middle school English reading teaching focuses on cultivating students’ ability of mastering language knowledge,processing text information and language application.At the same time,it is also the beginning of cultivating students’ critical thinking ability.Mind Map is an effective tool to develop thinking potential and improve thinking ability by combining graphics and text.Studies have shown that mind map can enhance thinking ability,improve attention and memory,and cultivate the ability to summarize and analyze problems,and also can inspire association.Mind maps will be introduced into the teaching of English reading in junior high school and it is expected to improve students’ ability of critical thinking and reading by carrying out teaching experiment and then summarize the effect of the experiment.This thesis combines with literature research method,questionnaire survey,and interview method to carry out teaching experiment.Firstly,the author consulted the situation of application of mind map in English reading teaching.Secondly,through questionnaire survey and other forms,the status quo of the critical thinking ability of the respondents were preliminarily investigated.The purpose of this study is to explore:1)What is the effectiveness of applying mind maps to English reading teaching to promote students’ critical thinking ability? 2)What is the impact on improving students’ reading ability by applying mind maps in experimental teaching? This teaching experiment took two parallel classes in grade 8 of a junior middle school in Xinxiang city as the research object and lasted for one semester.The data of CTDI-CV and reading test effect of the students of the two classes were compared and analyzed by using SPSS26.0 software after the experiment.This thesis found that in the teaching of English reading in junior middle school,starting with three stages of the teaching of reading,students’ critical thinking ability can be cultivated by introducing different types of mind maps.In pre-reading,inductive mind map is used to sort out knowledge structure.Students’ habits of induction and reasoning can be cultivated.In while-reading,analytical mind map is used to analyze texts and passages.Students’ ability of analysis and evaluation can be improved as well as their reading speed and depth.In post-reading,creative mind map is used to describe the core content of the whole article.Students’ logical thinking ability and creativity can be stimulated.Limitations: 1)The experimental data obtained lacks sufficient convincing and universal significance due to the small scale and short time of the teaching experiment.2)The scope of experimental research is limited,for example,there is no corresponding statistical analysis on the vocabulary,writing and other aspects of teaching.It is expected that more relevant researches will be carried out in the future in order to improve students’ critical thinking ability and comprehensive English level through mind map.