Application Of Mind Mapping In English Reading Class Of Senior High School

For English language teaching and learning,reading comes first to some extent in terms of significance.According to New National English Curriculum Standards(2011),English reading competence has been classified into nine levels,and senior high school students are required to reach at least level seven.Unfortunately,the actual situation may not sound that optimistic.A majority of students show low interest and poor performance in English reading,especially in analyzing genres of reading materials.Meanwhile,the teaching priority focuses more on grammar and vocabulary instead of the reading content.All these factors hinder students' reading performance and teaching efficiency improvement.In consideration of above situation,the author tries to apply a new teaching method referred to as mind mapping to English reading class of Shangluo Senior High School,aiming to explore the feasibility of mind mapping in improving students' reading abilities and to optimize English reading class.Mind mapping,a powerful cognitive tool put forward by Tony Buzan in the 1960s,converts a long list of monotonous information into a colorful,memorable and logical diagram by using lines,symbols,key words,colors or images.In China,a growing number of researches have attempted to apply mind mapping in teaching and learning and heatedly discussed over mind mapping implementation.Based on the theories of moderm brain science,knowledge visualization,Constructivism,and other related reading theories,this thesis focuses on the genres of reading materials and tries to explore how to apply mind mapping effectively in reading class.Based on the research background,research questions are put forward as follows:1.What are the functions of mind mapping in English reading teaching?2.What effects does the application of mind mapping have on improving students'reading abilities?3.How can mind mapping be better applied to English reading teaching to improve teaching efficiency?An empirical experiment lasting nearly four months was carried out for this thesis.Two parallel classes(N=119)in grade one,Shangluo Senior High School,were selected as the test subjects.Different research methods were used,including literature review,questionnaire,pre-test,post-test,and interview.All research data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.The research results show students are more interested in English reading and their reading abilities are greatly improved after mind mapping is applied.In this sense,it can be concluded that applying mind mapping in English reading class of Senior High School is feasible and effective.In this thesis,mind mapping introduced into English reading class meets the requirements of New National Curriculum Reform and promotes the form of student centered class which plays a positive role in cultivating students' core competences.Most importantly,the application of mind mapping in English reading class improved student's reading ability which provides a good reference to English reading teaching.Of course,this thesis may have some limitations because of insufficient teaching experiences,and remains to be improved.In the end of this thesis,the author also proposes some imperfect individual suggestions on reading teaching,and hope that these suggestions may have a small hand in future researches.