| English writing,as one of the five elementary language skills promulgated in the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 edition),is one of the important forms for English learners to use,organize,and output meaningful and coherent language.Lexical chunks are relatively fixed or semi-fixed multi-words or prefabricated sentences stored in the brain.The application of the lexical approach can be facilitative for learners to extract lexical chunks as wholes more automatically and easily in the process of English writing.And mind mapping,as an auxiliary visual tool,is beneficial to improving learners’ divergent thinking ability and creativity.Therefore,the present study sets out to investigate the effects of applying mind mapping-based lexical approach on junior high school students’ writing performance,which contributes to accuracy,fluency and lexical complexity in terms of language extraction,organization,and output.Based on Krashen’s input hypothesis,schema theory and scaffolding theory,the research questions are addressed as follows:(1)What effects does mind mapping-based lexical approach have on junior high school students’ English writing achievements?(2)What effects does mind mapping-based lexical approach have on junior high school students’ accuracy,fluency,and lexical complexity in English writing?(3)What effects does mind mapping-based lexical approach have on junior high school students’ attitudes towards English writing?The researcher conducted an experiment in a junior high school for 13 weeks.Two classes from the eighth grade participated in the experiment.Class 7 was the experimental class(EC)taught by the mind mapping-based lexical approach,while Class 5 was the control class(CC)instructed by traditional product approach.After data collection,the writing achievements of two classes’ compositions before and after the experiment were compared by SPSS.Then,the T-unit analysis was used to measure the accuracy,fluency,and lexical complexity of students’ compositions before and after the experiment in EC and CC,and the software SPSS 24.0 was also employed to run descriptive statistics.Besides,the analysis of the results of the prequestionnaire in EC and CC as well as the post-questionnaire only conducted in EC were completed by SPSS 24.0.In consequence,the study garnered the following major findings:(1)The comparison of the statistics provided by the pre-test and post-test of the students in EC and CC shows that mind mapping-based LA can improve students’ writing achievements.(2)Mind mapping-based lexical approach can enhance the English writing accuracy,fluency,and lexical complexity of junior high school students.The results show the ratio of the number of error-free T-units to the total number of T-units and the ratio index of total number of words in error-free T-units to total number of error-free T-units in EC are higher than those in CC,which indicates that the accuracy and fluency of junior high school students’ writing in EC have greatly increased by the mind mapping-based lexical approach.In terms of lexical complexity,the findings also show that Mind Mapping-based LA can improve lexical variation in students’ writings,but the teaching method exerts little impact on lexical density and sophistication.(3)Thirdly,after the 13-week experiment,students’ attitudes in EC towards English writing have changed a lot and bred great interest and confidence in English writing and mind mapping-based lexical approach.The study attempts to explore the effectiveness of mind mapping-based lexical approach on improving junior high school students’ English writing performance,which was proven from writing achievements,writing accuracy,fluency,and lexical complexity,as well as attitude towards English writing.It is expected that the research results can help improve English writing instruction in junior high school and provide a reference for further research. |
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