4。 Results and Discussion

4。1 The characteristics and styles of middle school students’ Mind Maps   

4。1。1 The frequency and choice of words extracted: verb>adjective>noun

No matter the types of writing or the grades of middle school students, the order of frequency of extracted words is: verb>adjective>noun。 Most of students’ Mind Maps tend to use verbs or adjectives rather than nouns。 A word, a phrase or a short sentence students extract from the text to summarize the main idea of a long sentence or a paragraph are always verbs and adjectives or phrases beginning with a verb or an adjective。 And when they use their own words to generalize the concept, those words or initial words are always verbs or adjectives。 The amount and frequency of verbs and adjectives are more than nouns。 The average percentages of verbs, adjectives and nouns are respectively about 63%, 23% and 14%。 Nevertheless, in the Mind Map made by the teacher, the result is contrary。 The average percentage of the verbs is about 8% and the adjectives is 10% while the nouns is about 82%。