An Empirical Research On The Application Of Mind Map In English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

Reading is one of primary ways of language input. Reading teaching is also an important component inEnglish teaching in junior high school. And National English Curriculum Standards for Nine-Year CompulsoryEducation (2011) puts emphasis on the importance of cultivating students’ reading competence. However, thepresent situation of reading teaching in junior high school is far from satisfactory. Problems such as failing to seewhole for the part, failing to find the main idea of the passage and failing to have a clear idea of the logicalrelationships between paragraphs exist in both teachers teaching and students learning, which prevent thedevelopment of students reading ability and lead to the lack of interests in English. Under the background ofadvocating students-centred teaching, teachers are supposed to explore how to guide students to read effectivelyand efficiently and encourage them to participate into teaching activities actively. Mind Map, which wasoriginated in the early1960s by Tony Buzan, is an expression of radiant thinking and a tool to organize andrepresent knowledge. The focus of attention is clearly concentrated on the central graph; The main themes of thesubject acting as branches radiates toward all directions from the center; The branch consists of a key graph orkeywords written on the line from which association occurs, and less important topic can also be shown in theform of branches, which is attached to branches of a higher level; All branches form a common node structurefor connection. As one of visual teaching and learning strategies, Mind Map can be used as an instructional andcognitive tool in English reading teaching and can make difficult and complicated materials clear and systematic,thus helping students to have a fuller understanding of the reading materials. Based on the previous studies madeon Mind Map’s application in English teaching and the reality of reading teaching of junior high school, theauthor made an empirical research on the application of Mind Map in English reading of middle school.The experiment subjects were two parallel classes of Grade Nine. The two classes were assigned randomlyas the controlled class (CC) and the experimental class (EC). Mind Maps were used in EC to assist teaching andstudents reading, while the traditional reading teaching method, such as grammar-translation method orbottom-up model was used in CC. The study lasted for seven weeks and data were collected from pre-test,post-test and questionnaires. Then SPSS16.0was employed to analyze the data and statistics from them.Moreover, after the experiment, an informal interview was given to some students in EC with an aim todemonstrate the research results more powerfully. The results are following:1) Mind Map can help the teacher topresent and teach the texts more effectively and it exerted a positive effect on students’ reading ability.2) MindMap is helpful for students’ overall understanding and information retention of reading materials.3) To some extent, Mind Map can enhance students’ interests in English reading and has certain influences on their readingcognitive strategies.However, due to the confinement of the experimental period, the writer s ability, the sample sizes and timeconsuming in creating Mind Maps, the research inevitably exists some limitations. Meanwhile, the researchdesign and data analysis are all limited to the author s school. Consequently, its findings may not be generalizedto all the junior high school students. In view of the above shortcomings, the author proposes some suggestionsfor future researches. In spite of some deficiencies, the research has its own practical significances.