The Application Of Mind Mapping To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

As is known to us all,English learning has four basic skills: listening,speaking,reading and writing.They are equally important and interdependent.As the requirements of the New English Curriculum Standards are improving,the teachers have already realized the importance of writing and they know that writing plays a very important role and writing can consolidate the ability of listening,speaking and reading.However,there are many problems existing in the daily English writing teaching.For one thing,the teachers struggle with English writing teaching and the classroom atmosphere is depressing.For another,the teaching efficiency is not obvious and there is no effective writing teaching method,as a result,students are not interested in writing and they are unwilling to hand in the writing assignments.Thus this study aims to use mind mapping in the English writing teaching in senior high school to improve students' writing performance and arouse students' interest in writing.Mind mapping is put forward by Tony Buzan in the beginning of 1960 s,which is an effective tool of expressing radioactive thinking.Mind mapping makes full use of brain function,the technique of graphic and follows the track of “center-around” to express the relationship among the various topics to make it visual.This study tries to apply mind mapping to the English writing teaching based on radiant thinking,schema thinking and dual coding theory,aiming to solve the following questions: First,can mind mapping improve students' writing achievement? Second,can mind mapping help to change students' writing attitude and stimulate students' interest in English writing?This study selects two parallel classes.100 students in grade 2 in No.2 senior high school in Wushan are regarded as participants and this study lasts one semester.The experiment uses three instruments including questionnaires,tests and interviews to collect the data and analyze the data to answer the research questions.Before the experiment,pre-questionaires and pre-test are distributed to the experimental class and control class and the data shows that most students have no interest in writing and have disappointing writing scores.During the experiment,the major difference between the two classes is that mind mapping is used in the experimental class but not in the control class.After the experiment,the scores in the experimental class are obviously higher than those in the control class and students in the experimental class have more interest and confidence in writing.The results show that mind map as a teaching tool can effectively help students improve their writing performance and change students' attitude and stimulate students' writing interest.At last,the study analyzes the limitation of the study and suggestions for the future study.