An Empirical Study Of Applying Reading-to-write Approach To Writing Teaching For English Majors

Writing is a manifestation of English learners'comprehensive language competence and it has always been an important and indispensible part in various China's English tests. However, writing has always been considered as the most difficult part of the four basic skills for English learners. Up till now, many researches have shown that the writing proficiency of both English majors and non-English majors is far from satisfactory in the Chinese context. In the past decades, researchers have shown great concern on the teaching of writing and a large number of empirical studies have been carried out to improve the students'English writing ability. Results indicated that reading is closely correlated with writing. Based on these studies, functionalists have proposed reading-to-write approach. There is a growing tendency to employ this approach to enhance the students'writing competence in China. However, few empirical studies have been conducted with English majors as subjects.This thesis attempts to conduct an overall research on applying reading-to-write approach in the teaching of writing for English majors so as to improve the students' English writing proficiency. The reading materials in the present study are selected from China Daily. The research questions are:(1) Whether the reading-to-write approach is effective in improving English majors'writing proficiency? (2) How to make best use of China Daily when applying the reading-to-write approach to the teaching of writing?The present study adopts an empirical research method. The researcher conducted a three-month-long experiment on the experimental class. The subjects,46 in total, are all full-time 2008 grade English majors from in Hubei University of Chinese Medicine. The pre-test and the post-test were employed, the results of which were fed into computer for SPSS analysis. In addition, a questionnaire was used to obtain the subjects' view on reading-to-write approach.The findings revealed significant gains in the student's English language proficiency scores, which proved the fact that reading-to-write approach is effective in the teaching of writing, it not only helps the subjects perform better in the terms of content, organization of text, choice of vocabulary, correctness of language, but also enables the subjects learn an effective way to cooperate with others in the process of learning to write. Furthermore, the approach helps students develop a good habit of reading English newspaper, which will benefit them a lot in the writing tasks. It is suggested that teachers adopt reading-to-write approach in the teaching of writing, and integrating newspaper reading and writing should be encouraged in the process. Based on the related teaching theories and the results of previous studies, the thesis provides suggestions for improvement in teaching of writing for English majors. It is hoped that the findings of the present study will offer some implications for English majors' writing teaching in China.