Effectiveness Of Mind Mapping In English Reading Teaching In Middle Schools

Reading is one of important language skills.The cultivation of students' reading ability is one of the aims of English teaching and is also an important means to develop their comprehensive language use competence.However,the current middle school English reading teaching and its effects are not satisfying.It focuses mainly on grammar translation,which is not conducive to a holistic understanding of texts.Consequently,students' interest in reading is not high,and reading effect is inadequate.It is therefore necessary to explore effective ways to improve English reading teaching.Mind mapping is based on radioactive thinking and graphic expression of thinking tools and is supported by knowledge visualization theory and schema theory.The study applies it to middle school English reading class and tries to verify its validity as a teaching tool.The study mainly highlights three research questions:1.Can the application of mind mapping effectively improve students' interest in reading?2.Can the application of mind mapping effectively improve students' ability to retell? If yes,in what ways?3.Can the application of mind mapping effectively improve students' reading ability and scoring ability? If yes,to what degree?This study selected as subjects 120 students from two eighth-grade classes of Linyi No.40 Middle School,one the experimental class and the other the control.The study,applying mind mapping to the experimental class,lasted 20 weeks.It adopted questionnaire,interview and testing as tools to test effectiveness of mind mapping in middle school English reading class.SPSS data shows that the performance of the experimental class was better than that of the control,and that their reading proficiency and reading ability were improved.Analysis of questionnaires and interviews reveals that students' text-retelling ability was improved,and that their reading interest was improved.The study thus concluded that the application of mind mapping to middle school English reading teaching is effective.