A Study On The Application Of Mind Mapping In Intermediate Level Chinese Reading Classes

In Chinese reading classroom,vocabulary and grammar should not be the only focus of instruction.Reading is a comprehensive process requiring analysis,categorization,generalization,etc.Traditional reading instruction lacks activities to improve these skills.Generally,there is no “communication” between students and the text itself.Mind mapping technique drew the attention of scholars many years ago,but the majority of papers deal with teaching vocabulary,grammar and characters.The absence of research seeking to improve the level of reading instruction might be the result of lack of clear and generally accepted evaluation system.In our research,mind mapping is considered as a learning technique,which helps students improve top to bottom and bottom up reading skills.In the process of creating a mind map,students use new vocabulary to fill in the mind map structure,thus carrying out bottom up reading strategy.The work with the text is divided into several stages: defining the main idea,parts of the text,keywords,organizing these words according to the degree of their importance and different relations existing between them.Thus,students carry out top-to-bottom reading strategy.To carry out a comprehensive evaluation,we need to examine whether students are able to retell the story based on their own mind maps.The new vocabulary,used in the mind map,should be elaborated on and explained in the students’ narration.We have designed two rubrics to evaluate mind maps and written narration.By means of these rubrics,we can understand from what aspects students approached and reviewed the text,as well as what difficulties they encountered in the process of reading and analyzing.Introduction of mind mapping technique into Chinese reading instruction can encourage students to participate actively in the study process,stimulate critical thinking skills and by means of two different systems practice vocabulary and language.