An Empirical Study On The Application Of Mind Mapping To Improve English Reading Literacy For Junior High School Students

English reading is an important way for people to obtain global information,and the cultivation of reading literacy benefits individual’s lifelong learning and sustainable development.Based on English Core Literacy,Professor Wang Qiang proposes “English Reading Literacy” which focuses not only on students’ reading ability,but also their reading quality.However,English reading teaching in junior high schools at present still follows the traditional teaching modes,which mainly focus on students’ reading ability and pay little attention to their reading quality.Therefore,it is very important to find out a new teaching approach that can not only benefit students’ reading ability,but also promote their reading quality including reading habits and reading experience.Based on Buzan’s mind mapping learning approach and English Reading Literacy Development Framework by Wang(2015),the present study applies mind mapping reading teaching approach on junior high school students’ English reading literacy.This paper attempts to find out how the application of mind mapping in English reading teaching can affect junior high school students’ reading ability,as well as their reading quality.First,an interview survey with 6 English teachers is to understand the current English reading situations in the junior high school where the author teaches.Next 100 students from two parallel classes of Grade Eight are taken as subjects,respectively as experiment class and control class.Before the experiment,both classes take the English reading ability tests and reading quality questionnaires,which show no significant difference between them.Then,the mind mapping reading teaching approach is conducted in the experiment class,while some previous traditional methods are still used in the control class.After four months’ treatment,both classes take another reading ability test and reading quality questionnaire,and the data of their pre-experiment and post-experiment are compared and analyzed on SPSS 19.0.Finally,an interview survey is carried out with 10 students from the experiment class to find out detail information on students’ English reading feedback about the mind mapping teaching approach.The results show that compared with the traditional methods,the application of mind mapping in English reading teaching can significantly improve junior high school students’ reading literacy,both in reading ability and reading quality.Mind mapping approach can especially develop students’ ability to summarize and inference the reading materials.What’s more,the mind mapping approach can effectively promote students’ reading habits and reading experience,especially for girls and students with high and medium English proficiency levels.