| Vocabulary is one of the most significant and fundamental elements of English.However,it remains an obstacle for many learners to memorize vocabulary efficiently and utilize them properly to communicate in everyday life.In primary and junior high schools,students can memorize and grasp the meaning of a word easily.However,vocabulary learning in senior high schools tends to be more challenging,because of larger number and various meanings of vocabulary.At this stage,learning vocabulary by rote may waste a lot of time,what's worse,words stored in this way may be easily forgotten.According to the characteristic of vocabulary in senior high schools,this thesis is concerned with the application of Mind Map to vocabulary teaching in order to make vocabulary memorization more efficient.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1.What are the effects of mind map-aided senior high school English vocabulary teaching on students' spontaneous memory of vocabulary?2.What are the effects of mind map-aided senior high school English vocabulary teaching on students' delayed memory of vocabulary?3.What are the effects of mind map-aided senior high school English vocabulary teaching on students' vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary size?An experiment was conducted in two parallel classes of Gaoyou Middle School from September 5th to November 11th in 2016.The instruments of this study were:questionnaire and tests.In details,before and after the experiment,questionnaires were carried out to investigate students' attitudes towards Mind Map,habits of vocabulary memorization,and strategies used in vocabulary memorization.What's more,vocabulary tests were conducted,before,while and after the teaching experiment.All the data in this study,including questionnaire,immediate and delayed dictation tests was collected by the author during the experiment.Data analysis involved Independent-samples t-test which was employed to calculate and compare the effect of Mind Map on vocabulary memorization.Also,the results of the questionnaire was analyzed and calculated by Excel.The major findings of this thesis are presented as follows:Firstly,after adopting Mind Map-aided vocabulary teaching in experimental class,students applying Mind Map to vocabulary memorization achieve higher average score on immediate tests than those who memorize words in traditional ways,which suggests Mind Map is more effective than traditional ways in improving students' spontaneous memory of vocabulary.This finding is consistent with Collins and Loftus'(1975)Spreading Activation Model that the search rate of relevant concepts is faster and more accurate when concepts on the network are closely related.This may be the reason that interconnected information is easier for people to remember.Therefore,Mind Map organizes isolated vocabularies into an interconnected network,which improves students' spontaneous memory of vocabulary.Secondly,students in the experimental class do much better on delayed test than those in the control class.The results of delayed dictation tests show that there is a significant difference between two classes,which indicates that Mind Map can help improve students' delayed memory of vocabulary.This finding is in line with Theory of Knowledge Visualization which believes visualized information can leave a deeper impression on our brain and be kept for a longer time.Thus,it may be the vivid pictures,colors and images on Mind Map that greatly promote the delayed memory of vocabulary.Thirdly,teaching English vocabulary with the assistance of Mind Map improves students'vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary size.The reason for their improvement is students have fully mastered how to use Mind Map,which make them be able to memorize more vocabularies within a relatively short time.This thesis also provides following implications.Firstly,applying Mind Map to vocabulary teaching can contribute to the development of vocabulary teaching methods.Senior high school teachers should place more emphasis on Mind Map in developing students' English vocabulary learning ability and adopt Mind Map to their vocabulary teaching.Secondly,when teaching vocabulary,teachers should not only focus on phonology,morphology and usage of vocabulary,but also teach students some strategies on how to memorize a vocabulary efficiently.Thirdly,Mind Map is a relatively effective way to increase teaching efficiency.Therefore,the application of Mind Map should not be limited to vocabulary teaching,it can be introduced to other aspects of English teaching such as:listening,reading,writing,and grammar teaching,etc.The study has some limitations and looks forward to improvement in future related studies.Firstly,experiment time is relatively short with only eight weeks.Especially for delayed memory test results may need longer period of time to prove.Secondly,the number of samples analyzed is relatively small,which may be not large enough to be generalized to all English learners in other grades and districts.Thirdly,there is no specific criterion for Mind Map drawing,so it's hard to make an objective evaluation of students'works. |
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