Research On The Mind Mapping Of English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary School

One of the basic goals of learning a new language is understanding vocabulary.The most common complaint among students during the process of learning English,is that the English vocabulary is difficult to read,hard to remember and write and easily forgotten.It is a matter of urgency to solve these problems in the current teaching practices and to explore new and more effective methods of teaching English vocabulary.Mind mapping is an effective graphical tool based on visualized thinking.It visualizes the thinking process of the human brain through a series of “maps”.At the same time,it can be used to learn the content through colors,pictures,and texts,visually presented to the students.It is very easy to remember.This study uses mind mapping as a visual knowledge representation tool to assist English vocabulary teaching.The purpose of the research is to answer the following two questions:Can mind mapping motivate students’ interest in learning English vocabulary?Can mind mapping help students improve the proficiency of their English vocabulary?This research is based on the theory of brain science,knowledge visualization theory and constructivism learning theory.It explores the positive role of mind mapping in promoting elementary school English vocabulary teaching mainly though using questionnaires and experiments.The sixty participants in this study were from two parallel classes in the fifth grade of Karamay School Attached to Beijing Normal University.They were randomly divided into two classes: a control class and an experimental class.The experiment lasted 14 weeks.The experimental class adopted the mind mapping method for vocabulary teaching and the mind map was applied to warm-up,presentation,practice,and homework for students.The control class continued to receive traditional vocabulary teaching methods.The data of this experiment is the result of two questionnaires’ and two tests..SPSS19.0 was used to analyze the data.Questionnaires conducted a comparative analysis of pre-experimental and post-experimental studies focusing on students’ interest in English vocabulary learning.Attention was paid to the three dimensions of content characteristic,psychological orientation and personal experience.The test used a final examination paper containing similar content in the city and then compared and analyzed the differences in the English final exam scores.The test compared the results between the experimental class and the control class before and after.The experiment’s results showed that the use of mind mapping in primary school English vocabulary classes can motivate students’ interests in English vocabulary learning and improve their English performance.This research has confirmed that mind mapping teaching is one of the most effective ways of teaching English vocabulary in primary schools.It will not only promote students’ interest in learning,but will also improve student achievement.Therefore,mind mapping teaching is worth using in primary English vocabulary teaching.Finally,the author pointed out the limitations of this study and put forward some suggestions for the vocabulary teaching of mind mapping.These suggestions included increasing the number of research objects and extending the experimental period to improve the effectiveness and stability of the experiment.