Experimental Study On The Effect Of Reflective Reading Training On Senior High School Students’"Reading-based Writing" Performance

English writing is a productive process of comprehensive skills most difficult for Chinese students to improve. For senior high school students in Guangdong Province,"Reading-based Writing", is even a much tougher task. As one part of a new English writing test in the College Entrance Examination,"Reading-based Writing" requires students to summarize the main idea of an English text and write a composition on a topic relevant to the reading material assigned. Given the importance and difficulty of writing teaching, many researches and practices have been done about the methodology of English writing both at home and abroad, but few investigations or researches have been conducted on instructing senior high school students’"Reading-based Writing". This study, based on an experiment of senior high school students in Grade Two of Heyuan Middle School in Guangdong Province, intends to explore the effect of reflective reading training on "Reading-based Writing" performance.The present research, with Reflection, Metacognition and Constructivism as its theoretical bases, attaches importance to the connections among reflection and reading comprehension and writing, attempts to address student’s difficulties with "Reading-based Writing" by reflective reading training and answer two research questions:(1) Can reflective reading training reduce senior high school student’s difficulties with "Reading-based Writing"?(2) Can reflective reading training improve senior high school students’"Reading-based Writing" performance?In order to verify the effect of the instruction, the author carried out a20-week experiment to compare the effect of reflective reading training and conventional writing instruction on improving students’"Reading-based Writing" performance.100students from two homogeneous classes were chosen into the experimental group and the control group in the research. A pre-test and a post-test and two questionnaires were used as the instruments in this experiment. After identifying students’difficulties with "Reading-based Writing", the present researcher applied three reflective reading strategies to reduce their difficulties and facilitate "Reading-based Writing" process: reflective questions, reflective discussion, reflective self-talk. The researcher collected both qualitative and quantitative data for research questions. Based on the scores of students’"Reading-based Writing" in pre-test and post-test, Independent samples T-tests were employed to test whether there existed significant difference in both the experimental group and the control group. Meanwhile, the questionnaire was used to observe if there is any change in the students’writing difficulties. Results show that the mean score of post-test in the experimental group is14.2600while that of the control group is12.0600. The T-value is2.426and the2-tailed significant difference between two groups is0.017. The means of post-questionnaire on students’ difficulties with "Reading-based Writing" in the experimental group are respectively2.54,2.32,2.66,2.54,2.48,2.46and2.24and the Sig.(2-tailed) are separately0.002,0.010,0.012,0.016,0.031and0.003, while that in CG are still over0.05.Based on the findings, the conclusion can be drawn that reflective reading training contributes more to "Reading-based Writing" than the conventional writing instruction, for it has reduced students’difficulties with "Reading-based Writing" and has significantly improved their "Reading-based Writing" performance. In light of the experimental procedures and reflective reading strategies implemented in the present study, we have the following pedagogical implications:First, thinking connections between reading material and writing content should be the focus when teachers try to improve students’"Reading-based Writing". They should explore various interfaces between reading skills and writing skills. Second, teachers should give students concrete instructions to reduce their difficulties with "Reading-based Writing", and reflective questions, reflective discussion and reflective self-talk may be effective methods for writing classroom of senior high school students. Third, teachers should attach enough importance to developing students’reflective ability in foreign language teaching and enable students to tackle their own learning problems and develop cognitive ability.