A Study On Mind-mapping In Improving Primary School Pupils’Writing In English

Mind-mapping is a tool by which human can reflect radiation thought in the form graphics effectively. It helps learners to get complicated and scattered knowledge in human brain organized more visually, logically and systematically.The present English writing status for Chinese primary school pupils is that they don’t know what and how to write, and moreover, they don’t know how to build up the framework for writing. This thesis attempts to apply mind-mapping to English writing and to improve pupils’interest in writing as well as their writing abilities.The thesis is based on Brain Science theory, Generative learning theory and Cognitive Psychology theory. The author has carried out an experiment in which mind-mapping is applied in pupils’English writing in Meilin primary school (Ganjingzi District, Dalian). The subjects of research are pupils of Grade Five in the school. And the methods of experiments, questionnaires and interviews are employed for the study. The experiment lasted for one semester (from September2012to January2013). The research questions are as follows:1. How does mind-mapping help children to form framework for their writing?2. Why can mind-mapping promote children’s interest and habits in English writing?Before the experiment, tests, questionnaires and interviews are given to both the experimental class and control class. The results show that the most of the pupils have no interest in English writing and they are lack of effective writing strategies. And the English writing scores of the control class is slightly higher than the experimental class. In the experiment, traditional composition teaching methods are used in control class, and composition mind-mapping is adopted in experimental class.After the experiment, the English writing scores of experimental class are proved higher than those of the control class. Moreover, pupils’interest in writing and their writing habits have been improved. It can be drawn from the experiment that as a writing strategy, mind-mapping can effectively help pupils to build their own composition framework and improve English writing ability for primary school pupils. In this study, it proves to be of a certain practical value for the teaching of English writing in primary school.The limitation of the study lies in that the subjects are limited to only two classes in the primary school. Besides, the time of the study is also very limited which reduces the validity of the study in a certain degree.