A Study On The Appiication Of Mind Mapping In College English Writing Teaching

Writing is a main way of language output for English learners. However, it is also the difficult point in English teaching process. From the students’ writing situation being reflected in the daily study, there are many problems that need to be solved. Many students express that they don’t know how to organize a composition on a certain topic, how to express their ideas by appropriate words and so on. Some scholars have put their attention on solving these problems. Mind Mapping is a kind of visual thinking tool which enables users to present their inner knowledge and thinking process clearly. It helps learners activate and reconstruct schema in brain, which improves learners’ writing proficiency.This thesis tries to examine the efficiency of the application of Mind Mapping in college English writing teaching. According to the review of Mind Mapping researches at home and abroad, some scholars begin to focus on the value of the Mind Mapping in English writing teaching. Based on the research results of the predecessors, this thesis uses Mind Mapping to train learners in English writing teaching process, which helps learners activate and reconstruct their formal schema, content schema and linguistic schema sufficiently. Meanwhile, Mind Mapping makes thinking process visual and graphical, which provides a good way of remembering knowledge so as to improve learning efficiency.The subjects of this research are 80 non-English majors from Shenyang Normal University. They are the freshmen in two natural classes. The English levels of these two classes are similar. One of them is randomly designated as the experimental group(EG) and the other the control group(CG).The research is measured by the pre-questionnaire, the post-questionnaire, the pre-test and the post-test, which aims to solve questions below: 1) Does the application of Mind Mapping have positive effects on both types of argumentation and picture composition in English writing teaching? 2) To what extent does the application of Mind Mapping improve students’ writing proficiency in the aspects of vocabulary, organization and content? 3) Can the training of Mind Mapping teaching model help students to activate more words when students make preparation for a writing task? 4) Will Mind Mapping help to change students’ writing attitude and situation?Data collection is analyzed by SPSS18.0. The results show that there is a greater improvement in EG than the CG on both types of argumentation and picture composition. Meanwhile, students in EG also work better in the aspects of organization, content and vocabulary. Through training by Mind Mapping, more relevant words are activated before writing. The students’ writing situation and attitudes are improved. Mind Mapping has positive effects on college English writing teaching.