On The Effects Of Mind Map-based Text-retelling On Senior High School Students' English Writing

The biggest change of English in the new College Entrance Examination in Liaoning province is writing.Not only is the requirement of English writing various,but the proportion of English writing is increased in the College Entrance Examination.From the summer of 2021 on,there will be two types of writing in College Entrance Examination in Liaoning province.One is practical writing;the other is continuing writing.Undoubtedly,how to improve students' English writing to be logic and complete in content has been under discussion among researchers and teachers.Mind Maps have been widely used in English teaching these years like in the teaching of other subjects.Using mind maps to retell text can improve students' control of the content and structure of the text and thus enhance their discourse awareness,which in turn promotes students' English writing.English writing embodies students' discourse ability since discourse is an important content in the new curriculum standards.Compared with the English curriculum standards in the past,the new curriculum standards focuses on discourse.National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017 Edition)proposes that the curriculum content and the standards of it consist of six elements and discourse and language use are added to language knowledge which is the third aspect of the curriculum content.English writing tests students' English basic knowledge such as words,syntax,grammar etc.Based on constructivism theory and discourse analysis theory,this research explores the effects of Mind Map-based(MM-based)text-retelling on senior high school students' English writing,and it focuses on the following questions:(1)Can the vocabulary activated by students via MM-based text-retelling be used in their English writing? If so,what's the proportion of it?(2)What effects does the MM-based text-retelling have on senior high school students' discourse awareness?(3)What effects does the MM-based text-retelling have on senior high school students' general discourse structure,contents and the coherence of language in their English writing?Two classes in a senior high school in Gaizhou Yingkou of Liaoning province were chosen for this research.Class 7 which had 40 students was the experimental class.Class 8 with another 40 students was the controlled class.Questionnaires,pretest and post-test were the main instruments to collect data in this research.SPSS25.0 and Excel were used to analyze the data.The results showed that students activated a large proportion of the vocabulary and expressions in their MM-based text-retelling process,and these vocabulary and expressions help them retell better;and they also applied these vocabulary and expressions in their English writing.At the same time,the MM-based text-retelling training enhanced students' discourse awareness and made their English writing structure and content complete and made their language more cohesive.Therefore,to some extent,the MM-based text-retelling was significant in improving students' English writing ability.However,with the limit of the practical operation and the influence of other factors,we should do more experiments to explore the effects of MM-based text-retelling on senior high school students' English writing in the further research.