An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mind Map To English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary School

Vocabulary teaching is one of the most important parts in the process of language teaching. Vocabulary proficiency has become one significant factor in the whole English learning. Influenced by the traditional pedagogical approach, the students think that learning words is boring and mechanical. Meanwhile, the teachers cannot motivate the students in English vocabulary learning, and it is an obstacle for Primary School students to memorize the words. Thus it is necessary to provide an effective method in English vocabulary teaching.Mind Map is a kind of tool to express the radiant thinking created by Tony Buzan in the 1970 s. The biggest advantage of the Mind Map is that there is reasonable use of the left and right brain function. It can represent colors, images and character at the same time; therefore, it’s easy for people to remember the information. This research project aims to explore whether the Mind Map is effective in teaching English vocabulary in Primary School or not. There are two research questions to be tested:1. Compared with the traditional method, can Mind Map improve pupils’ interest in learning vocabulary?2. Compared with the traditional method, can Mind Map enhance pupils’ vocabulary proficiency?There are 80 research participants from Jingsan Primary School of Jinzhou City and the author selects two equivalent classes which are then named the control class(CC) and the experimental class(EC). There are 40 students in EC and 40 students in CC. In order to make the study more objective, there is only one teacher teaching both classes. The experiment lasts for 16 weeks. The CC is exposed to the traditional teaching method; in the meantime, the Mind Map method is employed in the experimental class. The data of the questionnaires and tests is collected analyzed through the SPSS 19.0. The experiment results indicate the students’ interest toward English vocabulary learning is increased and their vocabulary proficiency is improved. Compared with the traditional vocabulary teaching method, Mind Map can have a great effect on word learning interest and word proficiency. Therefore, the experiment results verify that the application of the Mind Map in English vocabulary teaching in Primary School is feasible and beneficial. But this thesis also has limitations and suggestions for the future study are proposed: the study should design on a larger sample in the future and extent the experimental period to ensure the stability and validity of the experiment.