A Research On The Application Of Concept Map Strategy To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Reading is the most important way for learners to get information, and it is also one of the core contents in English teaching. With the implement of educational reformation, the new English curriculum standard proposes new requirements for students and English teachers. However, many problems still exist in the current senior high school English reading teaching. Therefore, it is necessary to find a new and effective method to assist students’ English reading learning.Concept map is a graphical representation of knowledge and the relations between knowledge. It is an effective tool for visual representation and organization of knowledge, which presents the meaningful relations between concepts in the form of propositions visually. It bases on the Ausubel’s Meaningful Learning Theory, and is widely studied and applied as a meaningful learning strategy. The application of concept map strategy in the English reading teaching in senior high school provides a new method for the presentation of the teaching contents.This study aims to study the effectiveness of the application of concept map strategy in English reading teaching in senior high school. This thesis mainly investigates the following questions:(1) whether the application of concept map strategy can change the students’ reading habits;(2) whether the concept map strategy can improve students’ summarizing ability; and(3) whether the concept map strategy can improve students’ reading proficiency. The subjects of this study are two regularly scheduled classes of Senior Two in Weifang middle school, altogether 109 students, including 55 students of experimental class and 54 students of control class. The teaching factors of the two classes are all the same except the teaching methods. In the control class, the teacher uses the traditional grammar translation method to teach. While in the experimental class, teacher applies the concept map strategy in reading teaching, and guides students to read with the aid of concept maps, so as to acquire the overall understanding of the article.The experimental results show that: first, a variety of reading strategies are applied in the concept-map-based reading process, and students can form an overall understanding with a hierarchical structure in the process of drawing the concept maps, which helps to change student’s reading habits. In addition, students’ summarizing ability can be improved by summarizing the key concepts and the links between concepts. Third, the concept map strategy can improve students’ reading proficiency. Therefore, the concept map strategy has a positive effect to senior high school English reading teaching.