A Study On The Application Of Mind Map To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

Mind map was put forward by famous British scholar Tony Buzan in 1960 s and was formally introduced in the world with the publication of the book use you head in 1974. Mind map is a visual graphic tool as well as the expression of divergent thinking of human brain, which was praised as a master key that can opens the human brain potential. As a kind of visual tool and divergent thinking tool, mind map can be applied to almost learning, creating, memory and all forms of human thinking.As a basic element of language, vocabulary holds an essential position in English teaching. In China, although our English teachers attach great importance to vocabulary teaching and students take a lot of time to learn vocabulary, it appears to have little effect. Vocabulary teaching and learning still make trouble for both teachers and students. As the research moves along at home and abroad and a variety of computer softwares for drawing mind map are developed under the development of the information technology, the links between mind map and discipline teaching are getting increasingly closer. However, the study on the application of mind map in vocabulary teaching in junior high school is still in early stages.This study intends to investigate whether the application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching have great effect on students’ vocabulary learning and memorization in junior high school. Based on the theories of levels of processing, spreading activation model, knowledge visualization and meaningful learning, this article attempted to test whether mind map can help junior middle school students’ English vocabulary learning through the teaching experiment. To verify this issue, the following research questions are put forward:(1) Can the application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching in junior high school improve students’ short term memorization of vocabulary?(2) Can the application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching in junior high school improve students’ retention of vocabulary?(3) What are the attitudes of Junior high school students toward the application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching?Combined with experimental contrast and interview, this study adopted both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The author selected two natural classes, a total of 85 Grade 8 students from a full-time middle school as research participants and administered the experiment for nearly a semester. Before the experiment, pre-test was carried out in both experimental class and control class; during the experiment period, 7 immediate vocabulary tests of each unit and the corresponding 7 delayed vocabulary tests of each unit were carried out in both classes and several students in experimental class were chose to have an interview after the experiment. And the following conclusions are reached through the analysis and discussion of the collected data and information from the experiment:(1) The application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching in junior high school can improve students’ short term memorization of vocabulary.(2) The application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching in junior high school can improve students’ retention of vocabulary.(3) Students in junior high school hold positive attitudes toward the application of mind map to English vocabulary teaching. They believe that mind map is helpful and useful for their vocabulary learning and increased their English learning interest to some extent.Based on the analysis of experiment results, some implications for teaching practice are proposed based on major findings in the last chapter, as well as the limitation of this study and outlook for future research were proposed at the end of the article.