An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mind Mapping To The Junior English Writing Teaching

As one of the four basic skills in English learning, writing plays an important role in English teaching. However, current situation of junior English writing teaching is unsatisfactory. Students are lack of interest in English writing. Teaching methods of writing are traditional and inefficient. Therefore, this research proposes the junior English writing teaching method based on Mind Mapping. Mind Mapping which was put forward by Tony Buzan in 1960 s is a kind of effective and visualized thinking model. The application of Mind Mapping in junior English writing teaching can provide students with writing outlines, structures and materials as well. It can help improve students’ logic thinking and therefore solve the most difficult writing problems for students----what and how to write.This research makes some teaching design with the combination of Mind Mapping and writing teaching, randomly chooses two parallel classes of 90 Grade 9 students in Zhangzhou NO.2 Middle School as research objects with the aid of multi-media and IWB. Questionnaire, pre-test and post-test are used to collect data and the experimental data are contrasted and analyzed by SPSS19 to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the experimental hypothesis. After a period of teaching practice, the analysis of experimental data shows: 1. the writing teaching model based on Mind Mapping can arouse students’ interest into writing; 2 Mind Mapping can broaden the extent and depth of writing and provide writing materials and outlines for students so that the writing level of students is improved; 3. the application of Mind Mapping can cultivate and train the “left/right –brain” thinking and divergent thinking of students; 4. the junior English writing teaching design based on Mind Mapping is not only an effective teaching strategy for teachers but also an acceptable and popular learning method for students in writing. All above proves that Mind mapping-based teaching design can clear the deficiency of traditional writing teaching and have some certain significance in improving the junior English writing teaching.