Effects Of Mind Mapping Writing Teaching Mode On Senior High School Students' English Writing Proficiency

Writing,an indispensable and important part of the four basic language skills,embodies students' comprehensive language competence,Nevertheless,the current situation of English writing teaching and learning in senior high schools is less than satisfactory.Mind mapping was put forward by Tony Buzan in 1960s,which was an effective tool to extend divergent thinking.In recent years,mind mapping has been widely used in the research of English teaching.However,researches on English writing teaching are relatively few.Based on Schema Theory,Constructivism Theory,and Knowledge Visualization,this study attempts to tackle the following three questions:(1)What are the effects of mind mapping writing teaching mode on senior high school student's English writing proficiency on the whole?(2)What are the effects of mind mapping writing teaching mode on senior high school student's English writing proficiency in terms of organization,content and language?(3)What are the students' attitudes toward mind mapping writing teaching mode?Both quantitative study and qualitative study were adopted in this research.With regard to the quantitative study,a three-month's teaching experiment was conducted among 98 senior one students from two parallel classes in a public school in Anhui Province.Before the experiment,a pre-test was held in the two classes to decide which class acted as the experimental class(EC)or control class(CC).During the experiment,mind mapping English writing teaching mode was adopted in EC while the traditional English writing teaching mode was adopted in CC.After the experiment,a post-test was held.The compositions were evaluated from organization,content and language,with a reference to the same evaluation criteria.Independent Samples T-test was used to analyze the data.With regard to the qualitative study,a follow-up interview was carried out among 6 students from EC and their feedbacks were collected and analyzed to probe into students'attitudes toward mind mapping writing teaching mode.The major findings were as following:(1)mind mapping writing teaching mode could effectively enhance senior high school students'English writing proficiency in general;(2)mind mapping writing teaching mode could effectively optimize the organization and enrich the content of students' compositions while it had no obvious effects on improving students'language ability;(3)students generally held positive attitudes toward mind mapping writing teaching mode,believing that it could develop their divergent thinking,enrich the content,optimize the organization of their compositions,and promote an active classroom atmosphere.Some pedagogical implications are advanced:(1)both teachers and students ought to develop an awareness of mind mapping in writing practice so as to lessen the difficulty of English writing;(2)the teacher should help students draw a well-designed mind mapping;(3)the evaluation criterion should be modified to assess students' compositions from different aspects.Some limitations and suggestions are put forward:(1)since the research sample was limited,more students from different classes,schools and provinces could be involved;(2)considering that writing teaching is a long process,the time span of future studies should be prolonged;(3)since the present research only considered the effects of mind mapping on students' writing proficiency,the future researches could study its effects on students' writing proficiency with regard to different genders,different writing proficiencies,or different cognitive styles.