An Application Of Mind Mapping To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

According to English Curricular Standards in the Phase of Compulsory Education(2011), junior school students should be able to achieve comprehensive English abilities through the process of learning, i.e., students should develop the abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing at the same time. Writing, as an important part of the comprehensive English abilities, is the most difficult part for Chinese students. Due to the higher standard of senior middle school enrollment test, students need to improve their English writing abilities to get higher scores. In order to write a good composition, students should write sentences correctly, expound events logically, describe characteristics accurately, and write articles independently. In this situation, many English teachers have been discussing how to arouse students' writing interests, improve students' English writing abilities, and solve other relevant questions.Since the reform and opening-up, the culture communication between China and foreign countries has been developing rapidly, many foreign teaching methods have been introduced into China, among which mind mapping is a good example. Mind mapping was invented by The concept of mind mapping was originated in the 1960 s, and it was invented by Tony Buzan. As the Chairman of the Brain Foundation, Tony Buzan is psychologist, a brain expert and educator. He proposed this concept and gave detailed description of it. The primary aim of mind mapping was to train those who had some difficulties in learning and reading. However, heretofore, this concept has been extended and applied to different aspects. In recent years, as a thinking tool, mind mapping has already been applied to many subjects, and it was proved to be effective, especially in educational field.In junior high school, students are in adolescence, therefore, they show no enough patience with hard study, but at the same time they are easily to be guided. Teachers can use some innovative methods to teach students, and they can teach students an analytical method and impart knowledge at the same time, thus mind mapping is a good choice. As English is treated as a major subject in junior high school, therefore, English teachers should pay more attention to explore teaching methods. On the basis of teaching method in English writing both abroad and home, as well as the theoretical bases of mind mapping, the author applies mind mapping to English writing teaching in junior high school. The research proves two hypotheses: 1) The application of mind mapping to English writing in junior high school can arouse students' writing interests, and change students' attitude toward writing; 2) The application of mind mapping to English writing in junior high school can improve students' writing ability, and improve the efficiency of teaching.In this thesis, the author, in light of junior high school students' characteristics and the theory of mind mapping, tries to explore a new English writing teaching method. In the beginning, the author introduces the background of this thesis, then expounds the differences between mind mapping and concept mapping, elaborates correlation theories about mind mapping and relevant theories of the application of mind mapping to English writing at home and abroad. After learning the background and the theories of mind mapping and English writing teaching, the author found that mind mapping appears late but develops rapidly in China, and the application mostly exists in educational field. However, only a few studies of the application of mind mapping to English writing teaching can be found. In order to enrich the study and prove the efficiency of this research, the author choose two parallel classes from a junior high school to participate in this research, and one hundred and twenty students in third-year as the subjects. Besides, the questionnaires and writing tests for students as well as the interviewing students are applied in the research.After analyzing the data of questionnaires and writing tests by SPSS 21.0, and summarizing the answers of interviewing students, the author proves the hypotheses. The results show that EC students arouse more interests in English writing and become more confident, hence, their English writing abilities has been improved a lot. The new teaching method can enhance students' writing interests, and help students to apply mind mapping to English writing skillfully. This new method can consummate English writing teaching method, and enrich writing teaching application researches. However, there are still some limitations of the research, for example the subjects are only chosen from two classes, and the number of the whole subjects is rather small. These limitations influence the universality of the research. This teaching method must be changed according to different situations, thus it can become very popular. Considering the limitations of the research and the problems which may exist in the future teaching, the author expounds some suggestions for the future researchers.