An Empirical Study On The Mind-mapping-based Interactive Teaching Model To English Writing Class In Grade One Of A Senior High School

English is one of four basic skills in English learning and is also an important part in English teaching. However, quite a large number of teachers and students in China do not pay much attention to English writing due to the imbalance between the time used in writing part and the effect. Therefore, how to cultivate students’ interest in English writing and improve their writing ability have been problems English teachers have been constantly thinking about. This thesis is based on the current English writing teaching situation of Grade one in Senior High school and devoted to exploring a new teaching model---the Mind-mapping-based interactive teaching model.Mind map, first proposed by Tony Buzan, can imitate the way that brain receive and reprocess information coming from the outside world, visualize the process of knowledge and human’s thinking process and help human know themselves better. It can help the construction of man’s knowledge network and be used in any activities about thinking,memorizing, planning and creating. Therefore, it has been paid much attention and applied in many countries. However, studies applying the Mind Map to English teaching at home are not thorough and there is no related study combining Mind Map with interactive teaching used in English writing teaching class in senior high school. The author proposes a new model for English writing teaching, that is, the Mind-mapping-based interactive teaching model, based on radiant thinking and constructivism which are the theoretical basis shared by mind mapping and interactive teaching approach. In this way, mind map can be used as an interactive instrument for the interaction between teachers, students, and learning materials to cultivate students’interest in English writing and therefore enhance their English writing ability.The empirical study focuses on two major questions: whether the application of new model improves students’ interest in English writing and whether it improves their English writing ability. The author selects two parallel classes (N=112) of Grade one in Jiyuan Senior High school of Henan province as participants, lasting nearly one semester.The experiment uses four research instruments including interviews, questionnaires,writing pre-test and post-test and collection of corpus to collect data and analyze them quantitatively and qualitatively to prove the research hypotheses.The results of study prove that the new model motivates students’ interests in English writing and improve their writing ability to some extent. There exists difference in the writing improvement among students of different levels and the new model is more suitable for students in middle level. Due to the limitations of this study, some suggestions for future research are put forward at last.