Toward A Mind-Mapping-Based Systemic Strategy For Junior High School Students’ EFL Writing

With the overall development of ways of thinking and EFL teaching,junior high school EFL writing teaching has undergone much progress,beginning to attend to writing methods and guiding students to use mind maps as aids of conception and expression.So far,however,it is still suffering from such problems as the negligence of writing strategy training and lack of systemicity in the view and use of mind maps.Meanwhile,with the steady growth of thinking methods and EFL teaching research,the study of mind mapping and its use in EFL teaching have made great progress with abundant achievements.However,studies so far conducted are still handicapped in their methods and results,and lacking adequate systemicity.In view of the above situation,this study firstly formulates a mind-mapping-based systemic strategy for junior high school students’ EFL writing in the light of dialectical systemic thinking,which is good at systemic organization,using the existing views and methods of mind mapping and EFL writing as resources,and through a method of theoretical research combining deduction and induction procedures.This strategy consists of three principles and four steps in three stages.The former includes the principle of combining independent learning and cooperative inquiry,the principle of effectiveness,and the principle of permeability.The latter include extracting the essence of the text in the input(reading)stage,learning to write with mind maps in the imitation stage,creating mind maps on the basis of the theme and writing independently by following the mind maps in the output(writing)stage.After theoretical research,this study then verifies the effects of the mind-mapping-based systemic strategy for junior high school students’ EFL writing on learning motivation and outcomes,with 80 grade 7 students from Lianyungang Xiyuan High School as participants,with EFL writing tests and EFL writing affective state questionnaires as instruments of data collection,with SPSS19.0 as instrument of data analysis,through a method of empirical research combining qualitative and quantitative techniques,and through a procedure of pre-testing,pre-questionnaire survey,implementation of the strategy for one semester,post-testing,and post-questionnaire survey.Results generated from the empirical study show that the proposed strategy can enhance the students’ affective states in and proficiency of EFL writing.This study is practically significant in that the strategy it has formulated can be directly applied to the teaching of junior high school EFL writing so as to solve the problem of inadequate systemicity in the understanding and use of mind maps.It is also theoretically meaningful in that its method and results may help to solve the problem of inadequate systemicity in the method and results of relevant studies.