A Study On Application Of Mind Map To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

According to The English Curriculum for Senior High School Student(2003),one of English teaching objectives in Senior high school is to cultivate the students’ integrated reading competence,develop good reading habit and wide interest.However,English reading is always a weak link of students’ English study.In addition,there are still lots of problems in English reading teaching,for instance,the lack of reading interest and the ignorance of reading strategy.Based on schema theory,constructivism and knowledge visualization,the mind map can cultivate students’ memory and creativity by means of key words,graphics and colors,which plays a positive role in English reading teaching.Therefore,this paper attempts to apply mind map to the English reading teaching in senior high schools,so as to promote students’ English reading level and stimulate students’ interest in reading.With literature analysis,questionnaire and experiment,the author has carried on an empirical research in Nanjing No.1 Middle School.The subjects of the experiment are 114 students from two classes of Grade Two.The author regards Class 14 as the experimental class,applying the mind map to English reading teaching while Class 6 as the control class,adopting the traditional method in English reading teaching.This study aims to verify the following two hypotheses:(1)Applying the mind map to English reading teaching in senior high school can improve the students’ English reading competence;(2)Applying the mind map to English reading teaching in senior high school can stimulate students’ learning interest.The empirical instruments include two questionnaires,a pre-test and a post-test.The result of pre-test shows that there is no obvious difference between the Experimental Class and the Control Class in the English reading competence.After a 16-week experiment,the author analyzes the collected data by Independent-Sample t-test and Paired-Sample t-test.The results show that there are great differences between the Experimental Class and the Control Class in the English reading competence.In conclusion,applying the mind map to English reading teaching in senior high school can improve the students’ English reading competence,stimulate their English interest in reading.Thus,the relevant suggestions concerningteachers 、 students and class teaching are put forward to improve the efficiency of English reading teaching in senior high school.And the author wishes that the study could provide the actual application of mind map to English reading teaching in senior high schools with some references.