The Application Of Mind-mapping Teaching To Senior High School English Underachievers’ Vocabulary Learning

Learning vocabulary is one of the first steps in learning English. However, it has always been a difficult point for both teachers and students in high school English teaching and learning. Because of a lack of methods, many high school students are afraid of learning vocabulary and their efficiency of vocabulary learning is rather low. As a result, they gradually lose interest in English learning.Mind Mapping is an effective graphic thinking tool typical of Radiant Thinking. Actually, it is a thinking map applied to memory, study, and thinking. Nowadays, Mind Mapping is widely used all over the world. However, the research of Mind Mapping in China, especially in its application to English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools still remains at the primary stage, which needs further study.The use of mind-mapping discussed in this thesis will help senior high school English underachievers cultivate a scientific learning habit and improve their vocabulary learning ability. The subjects of the experiments are senior high school English underachievers. In order to discuss and analyze the effectiveness of using mind-mapping to improve these students’ vocabulary learning ability, this thesis raises the following three research questions. Firstly, What are the causes of their learning difficulty? Secondly, what is the current state of their English vocabulary learning? Thirdly, can mind-mapping help improve their vocabulary learning ability or not?To answer these three research questions, this thesis uses questionnaires and English vocabulary test paper to collect information for detailed analysis and discussion. And the research results show that the reasons for their underachieving in English vocabulary learning include both internal causes and external causes. The internal causes refer to the lack of learning motivation and learning interest, perseverance and the learning strategies. The external causes refer to the poor relationship between the teachers and the senior high school English underachievers and the poor relationship between parents and the senior high school English underachievers. The current state of their English vocabulary learning is rather disappointing. The senior high school English underachievers never use vocabulary learning strategies to improve their vocabulary learning. They never classify words and phrases to enhance their memory of the vocabulary; instead, they just memorize them mechanically. After two months’ experiment, this thesis collects the vocabulary testing scores of the senior high school English underachievers in the experimental class and process the data by using the SPSS 19.0 and the Excel office software. The research result shows that using vocabulary mind-mapping can effectively improve senior high school English underachievers’ vocabulary learning and their scores have been improved as well. In the final part, this study summarizes the research and presents the areas for further study.