Research On The Application Of Mind Mapping In English Reading Course In Senior Middle School

Reading is not only a primary way of English learning, but also an important component of high school English teaching. And National English Curriculum Standards for Nine-Year Compulsory Education puts emphasis on the importance of cultivating students’ reading competence. However, some high school English teachers in China still use mechanical methods to teach, which results in teaching being insignificant and lack of enthusiasm of student in learning. As a kind of effective visual tool for knowledge representation, mind map can activate the left and right brain at the same time, and improve people’s comprehension, memory and creative thinking ability by means of key words, diagram and colors etc.. Therefore, taking the reading text genres in high school English teaching materials as a breakthrough point, the thesis applies mind map to teaching English narration and exposition in senior high school to find out the effect of teaching.For this research, 80 students from two parallel science classes were chosen as subjects of the experiment in Grade One of Huimin High School, Shandong Province, and the experiment lasted for seventeen weeks. This research adopts methods of classroom observation, teaching experiment and interview to discuss how to use mind map to improve high school students’ English reading comprehension ability. During the teaching experiment of the whole semester,the research explored the teaching models of English reading based on mind map in terms of narrative and exposition. Narrative is a genre, which is used to narrate the experiences of people and the processes of things. A complete narrative consists of two parts--the background and events. Two teaching models of mind map, including story and biography are constructed in terms of narrative. Exposition is a genre, which is used to describe objective things and clarify things. It is composed of introduction, body and conclusion. There are two kinds of mind map teaching models from the perspective of exposition, that is to say, general-special and problem-solving. The research has also found that the mind map of high school English reading teaching not only helps to improve the students’ ability of comprehensive understanding,information retention and students’ reading motivation, but also influences the use of reading strategies of students. Therefore, teaching effect is verified. Then, the paper puts forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions of teaching reform.This research presents a new teaching approach of English reading in senior high school based on mind map. It provides an effective teaching model for English teachers and offers students a new way of English reading comprehension. This method not only greatly improves the effectiveness of English reading teaching in high school, but also develops students’ readingcomprehensive ability and reading motivation.