Abstract：Vocabulary is the backbone of any language and vocabulary teaching is the basic and important part of English teaching in primary school. For teachers, they need some new teaching methods to arouse students’ interest. For students, they need effective strategies to grasp vocabulary. Using mind mapping to categorize the words can create a logical and integral word list for students. Also, mind mapping encourages students to use different pictures, lines and colors to summarize all the learned words. Such vivid learning process could enhance students’ learning motivation. Therefore, it may be a good technique to use mind mapping in vocabulary teaching. In this connection, the research aims to investigate the impact of mind mapping on vocabulary proficiency.

The research mainly discusses three questions:

(1)Does the application of mind mapping in vocabulary teaching enhance vocabulary proficiency among primary school students?

(2)What influences does mind mapping exert on students’ attitude and behavior?

(3)Is there any different effect from the mind mapping teaching in terms of gender?

The participants of the study included 92 students from a primary school in Hangzhou. The two classes were made a comparative experiment in which the experimental class was taught with mind mapping and the controlled class was taught with traditional approach. The result of the questionnaires and tests were analyzed by SPSS 19.0.

After discussion in depth, the conclusion can be made as follow: 1.The application of mind mapping in vocabulary class could enhance students’ vocabulary proficiency. 2. Mind mapping helps to cultivate students’ interest in learning English and form good learning habits. 3.There is no gender differences in the experiment results.

Key words: mind mapping; vocabulary teaching;  primary school; attitudes and habits; gender

关于思维导图的应用对词汇水平的影响

摘 要：词汇是任何一种语言的基础，词汇教学在小学英语教学中占据基础且重要的地位。对于老师来说，目前急需一种新的教学方法来调动学生的积极性；对于学生来说，需要一些有效的词汇学习策略帮助单词记忆。思维导图可以帮助学生构建一个有逻辑而整体的词汇链。同时，使用思维导图可以让学生用图片，线条，颜色辅助词汇记忆。这种生动形象的学习方式可以激发学生的学习兴趣。因此，思维导图或许可以成为一种有效的教学方法。在这种情况下，这篇论文旨在研究思维导图对学生词汇水平的影响。三个主要的研究问题如下：1.思维导图在词汇课中的应用可以提高小学生的词汇水平吗？2. 思维导图对学生英语学习的态度和行为有什么样的影响？3.性别会对实验结果造成影响吗？

92位来自杭州某所重点小学的学生参加了此次实验研究。他们分别处于两个班级，实验组接受思维导图的教学方法，对照组接受传统的教学方法。实验过程中的问卷，测验等结果将在SPSS 19.0的软件中分析，最终得出了以下几个结论：1.思维导图在词汇课中的应用对学生的词汇学习有促进作用。2.经过思维导图方法的教学，学生对英语学习的积极性更高，学习行为方面也有积极的变化。3.性别对此次实验结果的影响较小。

关键词：思维导图；词汇教学；小学生；态度与行为；性别

Content

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature review 2

2.1 Mind mapping 2

2.1.1 Definition of mind mapping 2

2.1.2 Previous researches on the application of mind mapping to English teaching 2

2.2 Vocabulary 3

2.2.1 Definition 3

2.2.2 Previous researches on vocabulary teaching 3

2.3 Researches on Mind map applied to vocabulary teaching 4

3. Research design: 5

3.1 Research questions 5

3.2 Participants 5

3.3 Research Tools 5

3.3.1 Questionnaire 5