A Study On The Application Of Concept Maps In Teaching EFL Reading Comprehension

The research at hand gets an overall view of the problems that the high school teachers and students have encountered in their EFL reading comprehension teaching & learning through literary work, classroom observation and questionnaire. Compared with the requirements in reading comprehension set in the English Curriculum for High School Students in China, much remains to be done in classroom reading practice.On the basis of this and guided by the theories of meaningful learning, cognitive-load, dual-coding and schemata, a quasi experimental research has been carried out in a group of students from a commonplace high school by using concept maps, including mind maps and other graphic organizers such as charts, tables and diagrams, as both teaching & learning strategies in EFL reading comprehension with the purpose to supply the students with more varied reading strategies, get them motivated and interested in reading and improve the students' ability in EFL reading comprehension. After only about one year's work, some changes have been seen in their reading comprehension, especially in their interest and ability. A very practical "scaffold" has been set up to support the students in their EFL reading. Most of them have learned to comprehend and mind map what they read, and formed the habit of using their prior knowledge to help them in the process of reading. They have learned to take the texts holistically and no longer take a tree for the forest as they used to. So we have come to the conclusion that concept maps are very helpful to the students in their EFL learning.