A Study On The Application Of Mind Map To English Reading Teaching In Rural Junior Middle Schools

Reading teaching is one of the most important contents of English teaching.How to teach reading has been a hotspot for many scholars and experts.As a kind of knowledge representation tool,mind maps make the thinking process visual,guide learners to construct independently,and greatly improve learning efficiency.In recent years,more and more studies have applied mind maps to English teaching,and achieved some results.However,in the teaching of English reading in rural junior middle schools,research on mind map application is still limited.In order to further explore the effect of mind map,the author chose to carry out this research.This research is based on schema theory,constructivism theory,and knowledge visualization theory,and aims to answer the following questions:1)What are the effects of mind map application on English reading attitude of rural junior middle school students?2)What are the effects of mind map application on English reading ability of rural junior middle school students?In this study,87 students in the Grade Nine of Zoushi High School,Taoyuan,Changde were choosen as the research objects,and theexperiment lasted 18 weeks.Two classes were chosen as the experimental class and the control class randomly.The experimental class used mind maps to assist reading teaching,while the control class still used traditional methods for reading teaching.The research tools were a pre-test questionnaire,two post-test questionnaires,a pre test paper,and a post test paper.SPSS was used to analyze the collected data.The research finds that: 1)Because of the use of mind maps to assist teaching in the experimental class,students are more interested in English reading,have a more proactive attitude and have more confidence in English reading.Students like to read,are willing to read,and read well.There were no significant changes in the above aspects in the control class.2)As a result of the use of mind maps in teaching in the experimental class,students' reading comprehension ability has improved significantly.Specifically,students' ability of understanding details,reasoning and judgment,and grasp of theme and attitude have been significantly improved.However,the control class students who still use the traditional mode of teaching have not significantly improved their overall reading ability or specific reading abilities.This research hopes to bring some enlightenment to English teachers in rural junior middle schools and provide some references for teaching practice.However,due to the limited capabilities,this study has the following deficiencies: 1)This study lasted only eighteen weeks and was not longenough to confirm whether the mind map will produce long-term effects.2)The subjects involved only 87 Grade Nine students.It is difficult to prove universal applicability to other rural grades or other schools.3)Classification of reading comprehension question according to specific reading abilities requires more authoritative opinions and answers.The small number of questions involving some specific abilities may affect the results involving such abilities.Therefore,further research needs to increase the experiment duration and sample size,and also needs to further balance the number of questions involving specific reading abilities.