A Study On The Application Of Mind Mapping To Rural Junior High School English Reading Course

Tony Buzan put forward Mind Mapping in the1960s. As a powerful thinking tool, MindMapping has been used in various subjects in different periods to enhance the teaching level.English is a principal subject in the period of junior high school. So there is more need todevelop teaching methods and means according to students’ actual English ability to meet thedemands of the age. Thereby, junior high school English teaching researchers should have theconsciousness to explore and apply new methods so as to improve the teaching quality.Studies on Mind Mapping started early in foreign countries, and have been used in everyaspect of people’s life. However, Mind Mapping was introduced to China very late.Nowadays much importance has been attached to Mind Mapping, but the number of itsstudies is far from satisfying. For studies specific to using Mind Mapping in English readingteaching, most researchers have paid more attention to college students’ and adults’ Englishreading course. While studies on the application of Mind Mapping in junior high schools,particularly those in rural areas, aren’t conducted deeply enough.In order to cover such shortages, this research would apply Mind Mapping to rural juniorhigh school English reading course, expecting to improve students’ reading ability and offersome references for the study on Mind Mapping in this field. This research contains sixchapters.Chapter One is introduction. In China, there aren’t many studies on applying MindMapping to English reading, and only a few of these studies are looking at rural junior highschool English reading course. While in some rural junior high schools, English readingcourse generally depends on teachers’ explanation. Students study passively. So this researchcombined Mind Mapping and English reading teaching together trying to explore the efficacy of Mind Mapping in English reading course by the empirical approach, so as to improve thestatus quo of rural English reading teaching. The significance of the research is that it breakstraditional teaching methods in rural areas and explores the application of Mind Mapping torural junior high school English reading course actively.Chapter Two is the literature review. Studies of Mind Mapping have been developedmore mature abroad, and have been applied to a lot of fields, such as personal and schooleducation, company management, etc. People have been paying considerable attention tousing Mind Mapping in education. In some countries, Mind Mapping is regarded as a requiredcourse in the phase of the compulsory education. However, Mind Mapping emerged late athome. Though researchers mainly focus on applying Mind Mapping to education, it still lacksstudies on the application of Mind Mapping to rural junior high school English readingcourse.Chapter Three is theories about reading and Mind Mapping. Theories about reading pointout that interactive reading model is the most effective way in three reading models. Based onthe function of the brain, Mind Mapping expresses the process of thinking by graphic way tomake knowledge visual, and then to accelerate individual’s knowledge construction as well asthe communication among individuals. This research was guided by the cooperation ofinteractive reading model and Mind Mapping. The author took text analysis as the mainmethod, and language analysis as the aided one, expecting to promote students to graspreading materials integrally in English reading course.Chapter Four is the research design. In this chapter, research hypotheses, methods,participants, instruments, procedures and data collection are illustrated in detail. Thisexperiment put forward two research hypotheses: one was that Mind Mapping could arousestudents’ interest in English reading, accelerate their interaction with teachers and their peers,and cultivate students’ creative thinking and radiant thinking. And the other was that the use of Mind Mapping in English reading course could improve students’ abilities of reading andwriting. Subjects of this experiment were students of two parallel classes in Potou Junior HighSchool in Jiyuan. And the data were collected by the means of interview, questionnaire,pre-test and post-test.Chapter Five is results and analyses. This research adopted SPSS19.0for windows toanalyze data. In the light of analyses, students’ interest, interaction between students and theteacher, communications among students and their academic achievements of reading andwriting have been enhanced.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis. On the basis of the analyses above, in the partof conclusion, the research indicates that Mind Mapping could increase students’ learninginterest and the interaction between teachers and their classmates, enhance students’ ability tomaster texts integrally, and improve students’ learning habits and the efficiency ofmemorizing language knowledge. In addition, with the help of Mind Mapping, teachers couldpresent teaching goals clearer, and arrange teaching contents more reasonable. Mind Mappingis active to promote effective teaching.