Divergent Thinking Training Based On English Picture Textbooks:An Approach To Enhancing Chinese Primary School Students’ English Vocabulary Knowledge And Learning Interest

English,as one of the main required courses in Chinese primary school,is intended to develop students’ basic core literacy,giving attention not only to their language ability and learning ability,but also to their thinking quality and cultural awareness.By now,picture books are often used as supplementary materials to traditional English teaching materials in primary schools.Teachers have been exploring more optimized teaching methods to enrich the teaching content and cultivate students’ comprehensive literacy.An appropriate use of English picture books in teaching can improve the students’ comprehensive quality in different aspects,including thinking ability,learning interest,vocabulary proficiency,and so on.To this end,this study attempted to train the divergent thinking of primary school students,with the help of English picture books,using mind maps and other means.A teaching experiment was conducted to check whether this kind of training can effectively improve students’ divergent thinking,English learning interest and vocabulary proficiency.The subjects of the experiment were two classes of students in the fourth grade of Shenzhen Hangcheng School,taught by the author.Class 5 was the experimental class,and Class 6 was the control class.Both classes took English teaching based on picture books.In the experimental class,the teaching incorporated divergent thinking training,while in the control class,the teaching did not involve such training.The experiment lasted for 8 weeks,with 1 or 2 class hours a week,and 40 minutes a class hour.Immediately before and after the experiment,both classes took a pre-survey and a post-survey on divergent thinking,a pre-survey and a post-survey on English learning interest,and also a pre-test and a post-test on English vocabulary proficiency.The results show that divergent thinking training based on English picture books has improved the subjects’ divergent thinking ability,and also enhanced the students’ English learning interest,and their English vocabulary proficiency.The study may serve as an example for primary school English teaching based on picture books,and it is also an inspiration for primary school teachers to improve their students’ core competences in English learning,esp.their thinking quality.