A Study On The Application Of Mind Map To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

Reading is the main way for learners to acquire knowledge and information.English reading teaching also occupies an important position in junior high school English teaching.The importance of developing students' English reading ability is also emphasized in the English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education published in 2011.However,the current teaching situation of English reading in junior high school is not satisfactory.When reading articles,students aren't adept at grasping the general idea.They are neither good at sorting out the logical relationship between paragraphs,nor can they use reading strategies properly.All these problems result in students' lower reading motivation and slower development of their reading ability.Therefore,in the promotion of student-centered classroom teaching model,it is imperative for teachers to provide a teaching method that can stimulate students' reading motivation and promote appropriate use of reading strategies to improve reading ability.The Mind Map was put forward by Tony Buzan,a famous British educator,in the1960 s.It is an effective combination of colors,images,symbols and words to express divergent thinking and to visualize thinking tools and learning methods.Based on this method and current teaching situation of English reading in junior high school,this paper will explore the questions as follows:1.Can the application of Mind Map stimulate students' motivation in English reading?2.Can the application of Mind Map promote the use of meta-cognitive strategy in English reading?3.Can the application of Mind Map improve students' English reading achievement?This experiment was conducted in No.6 Junior High School of Tieling City.And two parallel classes of Grade 9 were chosen as participants.One was randomly selected as the Control Class,and the other was the Experimental Class.In the Control Class,the traditional teaching method was used for reading teaching,while in the Experimental Class the teaching method of Mind Map was used.The experiment lasted for 16 weeks.And questionnaires,tests,an interview and SPSS 19.0 were used as research instruments.The data were collected from pre-test,post-test and questionnaires,and analyzed by SPSS19.0software.In order to learn more about students' motivation and reading strategies in English reading,a qualitative interview was made to some of the students in the Experimental Class after the experiment.After analyzing the experimental data,the conclusion can be drawn: firstly,the application of Mind Map in English reading teaching is helpful to stimulate students' English reading motivation;secondly,the application of Mind Map in English reading can promote the use of meta-cognitive strategy;thirdly,the application of Mind Map in English reading can also improve students' English reading achievement.Therefore,it is practicable to apply the Mind Map to junior high school English reading teaching.In addition,since Mind Map is a preliminary attempt to teach English reading in junior high school,shortcomings and limitations are inevitable and numerous efforts and investigations are required for further research.