An Action Research On Improving Writing Proficiency To Grade Nine Students By Integrating L2 Reading And Writing

The requirements of students'writing proficiency intend to apply and communicate in English New Curriculum Standards of Junior School in China. However, English writing is a complex process of comprehensive skills, which is hard to master and apply in a short period, especially for the students who are in Grade 9 Class 3 from No. A Middle School. They have learnt English for three years, but there are still many errors in their compositions, even some of them demonstrate a deficiency in English writing which leads to form negative psychology phenomena that they are afraid of writing and effects their improvement of writing proficiency.According to the concrete problems in the composition teaching in Class Three, this research conducted the action research to explore the effects of the method of integrating reading with writing in enhancement of students'writing grades. The research based on the framwork of the Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis, Information-processing Theory, Schema Theory and Discourse Analysis, and the results of previous studies on the effects of the method of integrating reading with writing.The objects were Grade 9, Class 3 and Class 4 from No. A Middle School in Urumqi. They are taught by the same English teacher, and there are no significant difference between their English grades and English writing grades. In order to settle down the problems from these aspects: content and organization, words and language use and writing mechanics, researcher and the operator did a teaching meddle which lasted 12 weeks. During the period, Class 3 was taught with the method of integrating reading with writing, and Class 4 was taught with normal teaching. After 12 weeks, the reseacher collected 154 compositions of pre-test and posttest, and typied them into computer to confirm that the method of integrating reading with writing can improve students'writing proficiency from scores of their compositions and scores of their compositions from content and organization, words and language use, writing mechanics.Through the research, we obtain the following conclusions: The method of integrating reading with writing enhances the writing grades of Class 3 significantly thorugh the teaching meddle in 12 weeks. It not only improves students grades of their compositions, but also it ehances their writing scores from content, organization, words, language use and writing mechanics. The significance levels of them are p﹤0.05.These results have some implications on English writing instruction in Grade 9: (1) teachers should put the method of integrating reading with writing into daily teaching. (2) Teachers should encourage students to read extensively after classes and form a good habit to write after reading. (3) Teachers should enrich their knowledge and change the assessment way to advocate students'writing proficiency in a better way.