A Study On Teaching English Reading In Junior High School Based On Event-Domain Cognitive Model And Mind Map

The new version of “English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education” released in April 2022,places higher demands on junior high school students’ English reading learning.And in recent years,mind mapping has been widely used by researchers and educators as a new educational tool in English reading teaching practice.However,it is clear from the literature that there are at least two aspects of the use of mind maps in the teaching of English reading that need to be improved.On the one hand,both researches at home and ab road have noticed the difficulties that some junior high students have in drawing mind maps due to their limited ability to sort out the elements of events in reading texts.On the other hand,different genres of discourse have different communicative purposes and structures.The knowledge of the textual characteristics and the way information is organized in different genres can help junior high students to improve their understanding of each genre.However,there is little research on the use of mind maps in conjunction with the genres of reading texts.Based on the above shortcomings,this paper develops a theoretical analysis and suggests that the Event-domain Cognitive Model proposed by Professor Wang Yin can be used as a breakthrough to address the above shortcomings.In other words,the Event-domain Cognitive Model can be combined with the mind map to construct Event-domain mind maps for use in junior high school English reading teaching,considering of the characteristics about the common reading text genres appearing in junior high school English reading.The Event-domain Cognitive Model is a representation of the main elements of an event and their characteristics and relationships.It contains the following elements,“Action”,“Being”,multiple sub-behaviors or sub-actions that constitute the “Action”(A1,A2… An),multiple individuals that constitute the “Being”(B1,B2… Bn),as well as the characteristic or categorical information about these actions and individuals.For example,the Event-domain Cognitive Model of the event "going to a restaurant for dinner" includes: "taking the bus","arriving at the restaurant","ordering food","eating" and other “Action”;"the guest","the waiter","the chef","the boss" and other “Being”;and the characteristics of the actions,such as "the feeling of arriving at the restaurant","the speed of ordering food" and so on;and the characteristics of the events,such as "the image of the boss","the attitude of the waiter" and so on.The combination of the Event-domain Cognitive Model and the mind map can overcome the lack of attention to the event elements and their characteristics and relationships in the traditional mind map,and compensate for the difficulty of showing the dynamic development of events in the Event-domain Cognitive Model.The dynamic nature of events in the traditional mind map is combined with the clear representation of event elements and their characteristics and relationships in the Event-domain Cognitive Model.This combination enables junior high school students to target important event information,to consciously identify the characteristics of relevant elements in the development of events,and to construct their diagrams more easily and efficiently so that they can clarify the logical relationships and hierarchical structure of the text they are reading.Based on the above theoretical analysis of the shortcomings of the relevant studies and their solution paths,this paper poses the following research questions.1)Is there room for improvement in existing models of teaching English reading based on mind map? 2)In what ways can the existing teaching of English reading using mind maps be improved?3)After improvement,whether the Event-domain mind maps can be used in practice to improve the English reading performance of junior high school students?Therefore,a three-month empirical study was conducted at The 25 th Middle School in Yi Chang City to address pressing issues in existing research.The study used the Event-domain Cognitive Model theory and Knowledge Visualization theory as the theoretical basis,and used tests,questionnaires and interviews to conduct the research.During the study,Class 801 was set up as the experimental class and Class 804 was set up as the control class,with the former using Event-domain thinking maps for teaching English reading and the latter not.The following findings emerged from teaching experiments: 1)There is room for improvement in existing models of teaching English reading based on mind map.2)The event domain cognitive model can be combined with mind mapping and integrated into the reading genre to improve existing English reading instruction using mind maps.3)After improvement,the Event-domain mind maps can be used in practice to improve the English reading performance of junior high school students,with the most significant improvement in the reading of narrative texts.The improvement in reading performance can be seen in the following three areas,(1)organizing the structure of the text;(2)grasping the main idea;and(3)extracting detailed information.Based on the results and the research findings of this study,the following pedagogical implications are drawn from this paper.1)Valuing the clues and scaffolding role of Event-domain mind maps.2)Balance the learning of genre knowledge and the development of text combing skills.Teachers should give full play to the two-way promotion between the learning of genre knowledge and the development of text combing skills in English reading teaching,in order to promote the improvement of students’ reading level.3)Focus on the development of students’ reading strategies and abilities.According to research findings,the Event-domain mind map has an upside effect on students’ ability to grasp main idea information and extract details.Teachers can strengthen the development of these two areas of reading strategies and skills in reading teaching.