An Empirical Study On The Application Of Reading-to-Write Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Nowadays, English writing is playing a more and more important role in our daily life, and the ways to teach writing has become one of the main concerns for researchers and English teachers. However, English writing is a hard nut for beginners, especially for senior high students, because it is a complex integrative process of comprehensive skills. Now experts home and abroad have realized the importance of the teaching of English writing, and have made plenty of studies about it. Some of the studies were on the basis of their native languages while some were in the environment of English as a foreign language. Although there were some studies about EFL (English as a foreign language) writing teaching, most of them were on the basis of documentary and theoretical studies, which is quite different from empirical studies. In order to solve the problem in English writing, a possible measure should be taken. A new approach named reading-to-write approach has been put forward to improve senior students'writing competence through extensive reading. Based on Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and Schema Theory and Constructivist Learning Theory, this thesis tries to prove that this approach is feasible and effective by carrying out an experiment.The thesis is organized in the following way: Introduction generalizes the importance of writing, presents the current situation of English writing in senior high school and analyzes the reasons which lead to it. It also discusses the purpose and significance of writing this thesis.Chapter One mainly reviews some previous writing instruction researches. Relevant studies at home and abroad about the reading-to-write approach are introduced.Chapter Two first analyses the nature of reading and writing and the relationship between them so that the hypothesis of integrating reading in writing class is proved feasible. Then it introduces four key theories. They are Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis, Schema Reading Theory and Constructivist Learning Theory. These theories act as a guide to find a better way to promote students'writing competence.Chapter Three is the most important of this thesis. It mainly details the experiment. Included in this chapter are as follows:objects for the research, research design, subjects, instruments, procedure, methods applied in the research, and the scoring and data analysis as well. All the data were collected from the experiment and carefully analyzed, which are used to prove the fact that by integrating reading in writing class, students'English writing competence can be improved.Chapter Four states the findings of the experiment. The limitations and constraints of the research are also discussed in this part. Then suggestions for further study are also put forward.The last part is the conclusion for this research.