A Study Of Application Of Thinking Maps To Drafting Of English Oral Presentation At Junior High

The 21 st century has witnessed the unprecedentedly increasing globalization of our world;English,as one of the most widely-used official language and the most important tool for communication,has established itself firmly with its universal communicative function.In China,the essence of learning English is no longer a simple set of test-taking techniques or reading and writing skills for scientific research,but a tool to facilitate smooth and efficient communication with foreign experts in different and diversified fields and people from all walks of life.Therefore,Chinese government has given much greater prominence to students’ communicative competence in English.In 2014,the Congress put forward the Decisions on Deepening the College Entrance Examination Reform: “a standardized English language testing system is now being phased in to replace the current competitive language testing system and guide the EFL teaching to the return of instrumentality and rationality.” Besides increasing the proportion of subjective written tasks in the English language test,Guangdong Province and Shanghai,the two most developed areas in China,have already added the speaking test of English language to the College Entrance Examination,with the speaking band counted in the total score.Oral Presentation,is a pervasive method of the Whole Language Approach and one of the most practical and efficient pedagogical activities in output language teaching.With the intention to considerably improve learners’ communicative capacity and develop a more effective way to teach productive language skills,the author of the thesis attempts to apply a fancy teaching technique with enormous popularity in western countries,“Thinking Maps”,to the oral presentation.The author chooses 51 eighth-graders from a junior high in Shanghai as the research participants,and designs a teaching experiment which lasts for approximately four months.Then the author collects and compares the data,trying to find out the efficacy of thinking maps on English language learners’ speaking tests and their drafts in writing tests.With an analysis of the test measurements and comparison between the advanced learners and the struggling students,the author finds some interesting phenomena.Through the experimental research,the author finds that the oral presentation assisted by thinking maps can effectively improve the speaking ability,divergent thinking and drafting in writing for junior high students;the teaching method based on thinking maps can improve the speaking and drafting capacity for the struggling students more obviously than that of the advanced learners,and is more suitable in the oral language study for weak students;the oral presentation based on thinking maps can stimulate students’ interest in oral language study,and let students draw attention to input accumulation and daily preparation before examinations.