Empirical Study Of Effectiveness Of Mind Mapping On College English Reading

Mind Mapping as an effective thinking model and a method which can visualize the process of thinking, is originated by Tony Buzan in 1970s. It makes full use of left and right brains, through images, colors and symbols to enhance people's understanding and memory, improve spatial intelligence and creative thinking. It has been widely used in many countries, and has affected many areas profoundly. In Europe, it has even listed as a required course in the compulsory education. However, the researches in our country, especially the researches on the application of Mind Mapping to English teaching still remain at the primary stage, which need to be studied urgently. Therefore, this study tries to apply Mind Mapping into English reading, aiming at testing its effectiveness as a teaching means and learning way and revealing that whether it can stimulate students'learning interests, improve the interaction between the teacher and students, develop students'creative thinking, and increase the efficiency of college English reading.This research selects two parallel classes (N = 50) in Liaoning Shihua University as subjects, lasting nearly ten month. The experiment uses different research instruments such as interviews, questionnaires, and reading comprehension tests including pre-test and post-test in order to collect the data and analyze them in T-Test by using the software SPSS 11.5 for windows. Then the significant result is obtained from the experimental group who apply the Mind Mapping in the English reading comprehension compared with the control group who are taught by the traditional method.The research gets the conclusion that the education of college English reading through Mind Mapping, stimulates their curiosity and passion for English studying,improves their reading strategies, strengthens their memorization of reading contents, broadens their thinking capacity, and enhances students'creative ability of using English. The score of post-test between the experimental group who use Mind Mapping in English reading and the control group who are taught by traditional method has significant difference. In view of the limitation of the research, some suggestions and hope for further research are proposed at last.