Effects Of English Novel Reading On EFL Students’ Writing Performance

OBJECTIVES:The ultimate objectives of this study are intended1. to find out whether the college students’ reading of English novels can lead to significant improvement in their performance in English writing,2. to examine the specific changes in the subject students’ writing performance measures after the designated amount of English novel reading, which involves such measures as "Length" and "W/M "(words per minute) for language fluency, and "T/T"(type/token ration) and "W/T"(words per T-unit) for language complexity,3. to investigate the college students’ opinions about the intake of English novel reading in English writing classes, and4. to investigate the college English teachers’ opinions and practices on the English-novel-reading-related elements in English writing classes.METHOD:This study employed an experimental teaching project involving contrasting between an experimental group and a controlled group, which resorted to a combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.Prior to the study, subject students were randomly assigned to two different groups—the experimental group and the controlled group. In the controlled-group class, the teacher employed a rather traditional way to teach English writing:on the one hand, the students were given several lectures concerning English writing knowledge and basic techniques; on the other hand, the students were required to write summaries and comments for each learned passage in the textbook. In the experimental-group class, besides the above mentioned traditional content concerning lectures and textbook-passage summary writings practiced in the controlled-group class, the teacher also gave the students instructions on English novel reading, gave the students reading tasks involving several simplified English novels, and required the students to write book reports consisting of both summaries and comments. The essential difference between the two groups is the introduction of English novel reading into English writing classes or not.It also included pre-testing all the subject students before the experimental teaching project and post-testing these students immediately following the project. Both pre-testing and post-testing involved an argumentative writing task and a multiple choice test paper for vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension. All bivariate correlate analyses between college students’English novel reading and the improvement of their English writing performance are based on all those pre-testing data and post-testing data.In addition, this study also operated pre-study survey and post-study survey with a questionnaire concerning students’confidence and motivation levels in English writing learning; besides, a large number of college English teachers who can by and large represent their peers were interviewed with a questionnaire concerning their reviews on their own English writing teaching experiences and their reviews on the intaking of English novel reading in English writing classes.RESULTS:1. The statistical analysis findings showed that, after the experimental teaching project, there did occur conspicuous difference between the experimental group’s holistic scores in writing and the controlled group’s holistic scores in writing, and there did occur great improvement in the experimental group’s holistic scores in writing as well after the experimental teaching project. But most these differences failed to amount to the statistically significant level (p=.05). Nevertheless, the holistic scorings of both the two scorers congruously unfolded a same change tendency in the relative status between the experimental group and the controlled group:the scoring of Grader A (the scorer Mr. He) showed that while the experimental group was inferior to the controlled group before the experimental teaching project, the experimental group surpassed the controlled group after the experimental teaching project; the scoring of Grader B (the scorer Ms. Xu) showed that while the experimental group was superior to the controlled group both before and after the experimental teaching project, the gap between the two groups was almost doubled after the experimental teaching project.2. In the experimental teaching project both the experimental group and the controlled group were given same trainings in English writing knowledge and techniques, they were taught the same knowledge about writing performance measures concerning language fluency and language complexity, and they were given same writing tasks including writing summaries and comments for each learned passage in the textbook. All these teaching efforts gave rise to positive changes in the subject students’writings after the experimental teaching project. Specifically, both students from the experimental group and the controlled group, in the post-study writing test, performed much better than the students from a non-subject group (a third class lectured by another teacher) in terms of the four measures concerning language fluency and complexity. However, the controlled groups like improvement in these language performance measures didn’t result in a same improvement in holistic writing scores as the experimental group.3. Based on all the statistical findings, and with the kernel variable of this research—the certain amount of English novel reading in consideration, it can be reasonable for us to believe that all the advantageous changes occurring in the experimental group’s holistic writing scores over the controlled group come from the experimental group’s active reading of English novels. For the sake of a more statistically significant level of difference between the experimental group and the controlled group, however, we may need to extend the duration of our teaching experiment, and refine our researches methodologically, so that we may be able to acquire more objective and more convincing research data.