Application Of Mind Mapping-based Process Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing,as one of the important part of language output,has always been the focus of language researchers and experts.The 2017 edition of The New English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools puts forward higher requirements for the teaching of writing.Teachers are required to focus on cultivating students' writing ability,pay attention to the teaching process,improve students' participation in classroom activities,and enable students to effectively carry out cooperative inquiry learning.However,there are still many deficiencies in terms of English writing teaching in senior high schools at present.Teachers often neglect the thinking process of writing and provide insufficient guidance to improve students' writing skills.As for students,they are usually afraid of attending writing classes.Therefore,the teaching of English writing in senior high schools has become one of the most difficult problems in English learning and teaching.This research attempts to use mind maps as a visual teaching tool,particularly during the process of writing which encouraging better logical thinking and much student engagement,and help students expand their linguistic schema,content schema and formal schema,improve their discourse awareness and improve their writing abilities.Having constructivism,humanism,schema theory and cooperative learning theory as theoretical foundation,this study reviews relevant literature on mind map,process writing approach,and cohesion and coherence.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods are employed in the study.Moreover,the use of mind-map-based process writing is implemented in the teaching experiment.This research has lasted for four months,and the participants are 130 students in Grade One.Interviews,text analysis and classroom observation are employed to collect data,and then the data are analyzed by SPSS 22.This study aims to answer the following three questions:(1)Is there any effect of mind-mapping-based process writing approach onsenior one students' overall writing ability?(2)Is there any significant differences in terms of senior one students' discourse cohesion and coherence before and after mind-mapping-based process writing teaching experiment? If yes,what are the specific changes?(3)Does mind-mapping--based process writing approach improve senior one students' writing classroom participation and engagement ?Based on data analysis and discussion,this study reaches the following conclusions.The mind-mapping--based process writing approach can improve students' overall writing ability in the experimental class.This teaching method can also improve students' cohesion and coherence in their writing products.In terms of cohesion,the effect of “lexical cohesion” and “logical cohesion” are more significant,while the effect of “grammatical cohesion” is less significant.As for textual coherence,the effect of “organizing the article structure” and “clarifying the article center” are both significant.In addition,this teaching method can effectively improve students' classroom participation and engagement.Based on the above findings of this study gives some implications.Teachers should continuously improve their professional level,make full use of various teaching resources,cultivate students' awareness of independent inquiry,and enable students to form effective learning strategies.In this study some shortcomings are also pointed out,such as small sample size,short experiment time,single test method,etc.,which need to be explored and practiced continuously in future teaching.