Effects Of Reading-to-write On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Quality

English writing, the most difficult language skill for the Chinese learners to master, is drawing great attention from the English educators in our country. They are devoted to find out scientific and effective ways of teaching English in order to achieve better results. This study was aimed at probing into the effects of reading-to-write on senior high school students’English writing quality in terms of content, organization and language. An experiment was implemented to compare their writing quality before and after reading the selected and refined argumentative essays.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1. What effects does reading-to-write have on senior high school students’ English writing quality in terms of content?2. What effects does reading-to-write have on senior high school students’ English writing quality in terms of organization?3. What effects does reading-to-write have on senior high school students’ English writing quality in terms of language?The participants in this study were102Senior Two students in Yangzhou Xinhua Middle School as well as the researcher himself. The instruments of this study were two writing tests, served as the pre-test and the post-test. Both the tests were the compositions of the mid-term English examination and the final term English examination organized by Xinhua Middle School. The results of the pre-test helped to decide on the experimental class and the control class, while the results of the post-test were used to be compared and analyzed. Between the two writing tests, the researcher selected and refined some argumentative essays from21s’Century to be the reading materials and implemented the two-month reading task in the experimental class. The researcher collected all the data in this study by himself. The pre-test and the post-test each is made up of three steps. Step one was that the researcher collected all the compositions; step two was that all the compositions of the two tests were scored by the researcher and one of his colleagues with the same analytic rating criterion by Cohen (2005); step three was to use SPSS17.0to calculate the relevant statistics on the students’compositions and then the researcher employed independent-sample t-test to analyze and compare writing quality. The major findings from this study are as follows:Firstly, reading-to-write has a positive effect on senior high school students’ English writing quality in terms of content. Quantitatively, in the post-test, the significant difference between EC and CC was.018. Qualitatively, students in EC used more powerful and relevant arguments to support their opinions, and more appropriate and convincing supporting details to support their arguments. Two reasons may explain the result. One is that the argumentative essays selected for the reading task offered comprehensible input. The other is that the students in EC expanded the vocabulary and absorbed the writing styles of the argumentative essays.Secondly, reading-to-write also has a positive effect on senior high school students’ English writing quality in terms of organization. Though in terms of organization, students in EC improved the least, there was still a significant difference at.05, which proves that they did better in the post-test in organization and being coherent. The reason for their improvement may be the reasonably organized and perfectly coherent argumentative essays. It is beneficial for them to be exposed to these argumentative essays.Thirdly, reading-to-write has positive effects on students’ English writing quality in terms of language. For one thing, in the post-test, the significant difference between the students in EC and the ones in CC was.001in terms of language. For another, most students in EC made fewer language errors, and they employed more effective words and more complex sentence patterns. This may be that there are many useful words, expressions and sentence patterns in the argumentative essays for the students in EC to use and that their pre-test stimulated them to notice the expressions in the argumentative essays.This study provides some implications. Firstly, English teachers should make full use of the reading materials at hand. Secondly, English teachers should introduce as many useful sentence patterns as possible to students so that their fluency of writing will be improved. Finally, English teachers in senior high school should guarantee adequate time for students to read and write.