An Experimental Study Of The Mind Map Influence On Junior High School Students' Lexical Competence

Lexical competence is one of the most important parts in the second language competence.It has become one significant factor in the whole English learning process.Influenced by the traditional pedagogical approach,the students think that it's difficult to learn English words.Meanwhile,the teachers cannot effectively motivate the students in English vocabulary learning,which is an obstacle for the junior high school students to recognize and apply the words properly.Thus it is necessary to provide an effective method in English vocabulary teaching to improve their lexical competence.A mind map,created by Tony Buzan in the 1970 s,is a type of tool to show the radiant thinking.It can represent colors,images and character at the same time;therefore,it's easy for people to remember the information.This research project aims to explore the influence that the mind map used in teaching plays to improve the lexical competence of students in junior high school.There are 84 research participants from two equivalent classes which are taught by the author in Foshan No.10 Junior High School.Before the experiment,they have no significant difference on English lexical competence.One of them is named as the experimental class and the others is named as the control class.There are 42 students in the experimental class and 42 students in the control class.In order to make the study more objective,both of classes are still taught by the author.The experiment lasted for one term.The mind map method was employed in the experimental class,while the control class was exposed to the traditional teaching method.The data of the examinations was collected and analyzed through the SPSS 19.0.The experiment results indicate the students' scores of multiple choices and writing,especially the scores of writing has obvious difference is improved.Therefore,the experiment results verify that the application of the mind map in English vocabulary teaching in Junior High School is feasible and beneficial for the development of students' lexical competence,especially appropriate production of words and expressions in certain topics or contexts.But this thesis also has limitations and suggestions for the future study are proposed: the study should be designed on a larger sample in the future to ensure the stability and validity of the experiment.