An Application Of Mind Maps Of English Writing Teaching In Junior High Schools

As one of the four language skills of curriculum goals,writing serves as a subsidiary means of English learning in vocabulary and grammar instead of an independent skill in junior high school English teaching.With gradual emphasis of importance of English writing,experts and teachers on English teaching proposed several approaches of English writing teaching,such as the product approach,the process approach,the genre approach,the process-genre approach,the content based instruction,and task based language teaching.On the basis of above writing approaches,English teachers try their best to deliver good writing lessons,but they still meet with difficulties on vocabulary,sentence patterns,grammar errors,vague writing purpose,and few interests.As Writing occupies 12.5%of the whole score in Senior High School Entrance Examination of English subject,it is urgent for English teachers to effectively improve junior high school students' writing scores.The cognitive stage of junior high school students changes mainly from simple and concrete thinking to complicated and abstract thinking.Students need a kind of simple and efficient thinking tool to help them learn English writing.Tony Buzan introduced Mind Map-the colorful,radiant and tree-like diagram on the BBC TV show called Use Your Head in 1974.After that,Mind Maps were prevalent in many fields,such as on personal,family,educational,medical,business,and occupational purposes.At present,there have been some researches on Mind Maps used in English vocabulary,grammar and reading,but few in English writing.On the theoretical bases of Brain Science Theory,Divergent Thinking,and Meaningful Learning,this research aims to solve the following questions:(i)What changes does English writing teaching with Mind Maps cause on students' writing scores?(ii)What differences do writing lessons with and without Mind Maps have on English teachers and on students?(iii)Does English writing teaching with Mind Maps affect students' vocabulary,grammar and reading in English learning?The experimental subjects were six English teachers and two parallel classes,each of which consisted of 45 8th graders of Longgang Foreign Language School in Shenzhen.The experimental material is the 8th grade English textbook(version of Shanghai Education Press),the writing approach is the process approach,and experiment group has the contents of making Mind Maps before writing drafts,and the control group follows the ordinary writing lessons.Two questionnaires,two tests and two interviews were adopted during the research from Feb 20th,2016 to Jul 8th,2016;and the data obtained were analyzed by SPSS 19.0 and Excel.The results of this study shows that(i)students' writing scores of experiment group was statistically and substantially higher than control group's.(ii)English writing teaching had variations before and after the experiment on following three aspects:the teacher 's teaching concepts(necessity of having specific writing lessons,difficulty of improving students' writing scores and utilizing materials in textbooks),teaching procedures and challenges during the experiment,and opinions of further teaching were varied than before;and she could make annual plans,semester plans,unit plans and teaching plans with Mind Maps in short time and with keywords,so that the plans she made could be clearly reread,reviewed and added;the changes also happened to students' learning attitudes,writing problems and writing concepts,(iii)In addition,Mind Maps applied in writing lessons further promoted students' improvement on vocabulary,grammar and reading.This research is applicable,beneficial and has practical meaning on English writing teaching in junior high schools in China.