An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mind Map To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools

Vocabulary is an important,if not the most important,aspect for EFL learning.Therefore,vocabulary teaching should enable students to identify and use vocabularies effectively and master the relevant vocabulary learning strategies and skills.The present study,from the perspective of receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary,explores the effects of the application of Mind Map to senior high school vocabulary teaching on the two types of vocabulary.In simple terms,receptive vocabulary is the vocabulary that students can recognize the meaning of which in receptive tasks like reading and listening.While productive vocabulary is that the students can use freely and correctly in conversation and writing.How to promote students’ study on these two types of vocabularies is of great importance for English teaching.Inspired by foreign researches and application of Mind Map,the author attempts to combine Mind Map,which is a tool of visualizing and deep-processing information and knowledge,with vocabulary teaching so as to improve the efficiency of students’ receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary learning.Hence two research questions are put forward as follows:(1)What is the effect of the application of Mind Map to vocabulary teaching on students’vocabulary competence?(2)What is the effect of the application of Mind Map to vocabulary teaching on students’ attitude,strategy and interest towards vocabulary learning?The above questions will be answered through an empirical research,the experimental subject of which are students from two parallel classes of Grade One in a senior high school.One is experimental class and the other is control class.Vocabulary teaching with Mind Map was carried out in the experimental class while the control class still used the traditional way of teaching.The experimental class and the control class were of the same level on receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary level confirmed by pre-test.Before the experiment,the author conducted a test for choosing target teaching words in another two parallel classes of Grade One to ensure as far as possible that all the target words are new to the subjects.54 target words were selected according to the receptive and productive vocabulary test format,of which 36 were used as the receptive test and the other 18 as the productive test.The post-test in both classes was carried out after two-month teaching and a conclusion was drawn by the contrast of scores of the two classed:the receptive and productive vocabulary test scores of the experimental class are significantly higher than the control class.This shows that the application of Mind Map can effectively promote high school students’receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary learning efficiency.In addition,the questionnaire survey were conducted before and after the experiment in both the experimental class and the control class,which includes students,interest,attitude and strategy towards vocabulary learning,to serve as the supportive evidence of the test results.The results of the present study are significant to English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.Teachers may employ Mind Map to assist teaching design.Not only can it improve students’ receptive vocabulary,but also facilitates their converting from receptive vocabulary to productive vocabulary to grasp the key vocabularies better.Last but not least,the creation of Mind Map is a personalized process that different students may have a completely divergent way of knowledge construction and characterization on the same vocabulary.This kind of personalization helps each student to give their different talents to a full play to improve his/her learning efficiency.Therefore,teachers should be act more as a facilitator for students and help them in the construction of knowledge instead of merely indoctrinating.