The Effect Of Enhanced Reading Instruction On Writing Performance Of College English Learners

This study is an exploration of the influence of enhanced reading instruction on writing performance in second language acquisition. Based on the theories and empirical studies in the fields of education and second language acquisition, the researcher assumed that the integration of enhanced reading instruction in writing leads to significant writing improvement of second language learners, and this improvement is reflected in the aspect of language fluency (t=-6.99, p=.000), accuracy (t=-4.50, p=.000) as well as complexity (t=-2.62, p=.020).To test the above hypotheses, the researcher conducted an experimental study at Shandong University. All of the 80 participants were second year non-English majors, and they have learned English as a compulsory course for at least eight years. The participants were divided into control group and experimental group. The control group was only assigned writing tasks every two weeks without any reading instruction, while the experimental group was offered reading materials and instructions before they started the writing task. The compositions of all the participants were collected before and after the fourteen-week experimental treatment and were analyzed to testify the hypotheses. Besides, one questionnaire and one interview were utilized to complement this study.SPSS 16.0 was employed to analyze the data of this study. It is found that the enhanced reading instruction imposes significant influence on writing, specifically speaking, the integration of enhanced reading instruction in writing results in significant advancement in students'writing performance, and this progress demonstrates itself in terms of language fluency, accuracy as well as complexity.This study has significant implications for foreign language teaching practice. It provides insightful information for foreign language teachers to value the important role of reading instruction in writing. It suggests that teachers should be aware of combining reading and writing. They can offer students some reading materials before they begin to write and encourage students to reading widely after class. However, owing to the complexity of factors contributing to writing improvement, this study still has some limitations. Thus efforts are still needed to conduct further research in order to provide deeper insight on this issue in second language acquisition.