| We can not deny the fact that reading is really the foundation of English learning. Just assomeone puts it, reading is the best way for human being to acquire knowledge. A relevantresearch suggests that about81%of information in modern people’s brains is received byreading. It’s really universally acknowledged that more and more educational researchers aredevoting themselves to exploring some different and more effective methods and strategies ofEnglish learning. With the development of the society, the concepts of the New CurriculumReform have greatly influenced English teaching. The New English Curriculum for SeniorHigh Schools points out that the new round of English curriculum reform will try to changethe traditional teaching method of simply imparting linguistic knowledge (grammar, words,and sentences) and neglecting the cultivation of practical linguistic use. In addition, it willattach much importance to students’ ability to use language comprehensively with fullconsideration of their learning interest, life experience and cognitive level, and advocatepractice, participation and cooperation in class teaching.As is known to all, learning English well is very important today. But it is not easy tomake it, especially for middle school students. English reading is one of the most importantskills for senior students to master. However, how to obtain the reading comprehension abilitylargely depends on teaching methods and learning strategies. If all the teachers’ guidance canbe carried out properly, students can learn much from the reading materials. Once we inspiretheir interest and enthusiasm in learning English, they will have greater tendency to learn itbetter. Then reading efficiency will be higher and reading achievement will be increasednaturally.Mind mapping is such an effective diagram technique which can motivate students’reading interest and increase their reading achievements. Actually, it is a graphic thinking toolapplied to memory, study, and thinking, which has been regarded as a much perfect andpowerful tool to express radiant thinking. Mind Map also has been recognized as the skeletonkey to exploring the potential of the brain. In order to make mind mapping more interesting,beautiful, and more individual, colors, pictures, images are often added. With this, creativity,memory and especially the review of information can be greatly enhanced. Nowadays, Mind Maps have been widely used for many purposes in many fields around the world. In teachingarea, teachers use it to improve their instructions and students’ learning. It is no doubt thatmind maps can assist students with processing information, and creating meaningful learning,which is crucial to students’ learning process. Mind maps can make students understand whatthey are learning with a meaningful and interesting way.In this article, the writer will firstly emphasize the importance of English reading insenior high school English teaching, and regard reading as the center of English teaching. Andthen she comes up with current problems of English reading teaching and learning in presentsenior high schools. The author will demonstrate the emergency of mind maps and refer tosome relevant literatures on the application of mind maps to English reading teaching abroadand in China. The author analyzes the roles and effects of mind maps in helping students withEnglish reading, from increasing their interest to enhancing their reading achievements. Inthis thesis, the author adopted two research methods, one is quantitative method, and the otheris Qualitative methods. The author chose80students as subjects from two classes. One isexperiment class, in which the author applied mind map strategy to English reading, and theother is control class, in which the author still adopted the traditional English reading teaching.In this research, it is obvious that it is effective to apply mind maps to senior high schoolEnglish reading in respect of motivating their English reading interest and increasing theirreading scores. |
PDF Full Text Request