A Study On College English Vocabulary Teaching Assisted By Mind Map & Visual Thesaurus

Vocabulary is one of the three important parts of any language and it is also the cornerstone of any language. So the vocabulary teaching is very important in language teaching. The author of the present thesis attempts to analyze the relationship between mind map, Visual Thesaurus, and achievement on college English vocabulary teaching and learning through experiments, with the purpose of exploring a new technical approach to college English vocabulary teaching which is assisted by mind map and Visual Thesaurus.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied in the present study. A comparison was carried out between college English vocabulary learning based on mind map and Visual Thesaurus, and incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.This present research proposed two hypotheses because of the following two reasons: First, because vocabulary is stored in our mind in a semantic network, applying mind map to vocabulary teaching and learning can facilitate the activation of various semantic relations among words in the mind, which greatly promotes the learners' deep processing of vocabulary. Second, words are usually related to one another in the form of cohesions in the context. Constructing mind map of vocabulary in the text can make more noticeable the interrelations among words in the text, which will enhance the participants' language proficiency.After analyzing the experiment data, the research proved the two hypotheses: First, compared with incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading, mind map and Visual Thesaurus-aided vocabulary teaching has a more positive effect on enlarging participants' vocabulary, though both approaches to vocabulary teaching have positive influence on participants' vocabulary growth. Second, compared with incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading, mind map and Visual Thesaurus-aided vocabulary learning has a more positive effect on improving participants' language proficiency. Mind map can help participants increase their language proficiency more effectively through constructing the text mind map to gain a clear understanding about the content of the passage, though these two different vocabulary learning strategies are found to facilitate participants' language proficiency increase.In all, the results show that mind-map and Visual Thesaurus have significantly positive effect on the English vocabulary teaching and learning for Chinese none-English majors. This study reveals that it is rational and feasible to apply mind map and Visual Thesaurus to college English vocabulary teaching and learning.