An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mind Maps To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

MindMap was brought forward by Tony Buzan in1960s. It uses texts andpictures to present, organize and elaborate information, and it can transfer the obscureand unordered knowledge into logical context and clear pictures. MindMap can helppeople improve logical thinking ability and learning efficiency. In recent years,MindMap has been used in English teaching researches, however, most of them areabout vocabulary and there are few researches on English writing teaching.Writing, as one of the four basic skills in English learning, it can reflect one’slanguage comprehensive abilities. The Senior High English Standard compiled byMinistry of Education in2003has made higher requirements for students writingability. A large vocabulary, writing skill, discourse awareness and logical thinking areall required to compose a good writing. But the present teaching situation is far fromoptimistic. How to improve students’ writing ability is a tough problem teachers arefaced with.This study tries to apply MindMap into senior high school’s English writingteaching. For students, brainstorming can enlarge their vocabulary; MindMap canimprove their divergent thinking ability, raise their writing interest and discourseawareness. For teachers, the author tries to provide a useful teaching tool to help theirEnglish writing teaching.This study, firstly, reviews literature on MindMap at home and abroad to knowthe research’s orientation and what have been done in this field, then states theoreticalfoundation of this research. Based on these, the concept, the features and the drawingmethods of MindMap are introduced. A specific teaching case is also presented tohelp explain how to apply MindMap into English writing teaching. This study laststwo months in the author’s practice school---Shandong Jigang Senior HighSchool,where the author teaches as an intern. The participants of the study are110students in Senior Two. The comparative experiment method is used in the research,class13is the experimental class while class12is the control class. The experimentuses three instruments, namely, interviews, questionnaires and writing tests and the data are analyzed by SPSS.Through the analysis of experiment data, we draw the conclusion：1.Theapplication of MindMap can improve students’ writing ability.2. The application ofMindMap can improve students ability to design the whole discourse.3. Theapplication of MindMap can increase students’ writing interest and make them moreconfident. In the end, some limitations of this research are addressed and also somesuggestions are given for the further research as well.