An Empirical Study On Reading-to-write In EFL Writing Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

It is well known that English writing is one of the five basic skills of English learning which is aprocess of checking students’ integrated ability in language learning. In the field of English writingresearch, one of the concerns is the effective writing approach. It is admitted that reading and writing aretwo important skills, which are interdependent on and interacted with each other. However, reading andwriting are taught as two separate skills for a long time. Some researches indicate that reading contributesto writing, but the actual situation is that writing instruction ignores the function of reading in writingprocess. Therefore, it is terribly needed to integrate reading with writing, because reading can broadenstudents’ knowledge. And appropriate reading materials can set a good model of writing. In addition,writing is an act which imitates reading and vise versa. Reading and writing are interrelated and interacted,so we should provide students’ chances to learn to write through reading and to learn to read throughwriting (Xie Weina,1994). Based on the basis of input and output hypothesis, the study integrates readingwith writing and applies it in English writing teaching of junior middle school. In other words, students areasked to read and to learn vocabulary usage, native language, correct grammar and content of readingmaterials before writing, and then apply them in their own writing. This study is designed to discuss thefollowing questions：1) Compared with write-only, can reading-to-write approach improve junior middle school students’writing performance? If so, which aspects?2) Can reading-to-write approach arouse junior middle school students’ writing interest?To achieve the goal of research, two classes, which totally125students in Grade8from Jiao TongluMiddle School in Anding District of Dingxi city, are chosen as subjects. One is control class (CC) and theother is experimental class (EC). The teaching experiment lasted two months with write-only andreading-to-write approach.After the experiment, we find that there are significant differences between control class andexperimental class on writing score. Through analyzing the data of tests, we can see that students’ writingperformance（EC）outperformed than（CC）ranging from richness of content, vocabulary usage, correctgrammar to native language. The results of questionnaire also indicate that reading-to-write approach canarouse students’ writing interest and confidence. So we can conclude that reading-to-write approach is aneffective way to improve students’ writing performance to some extent The implications from of the study are that writing can be taught through reading, and writing can beintegrated with reading to maximize the possibility of using information acquired from reading. However,it has to be admitted that reading-to-write approach is not a teaching method which can solve all theproblems in writing teaching. Therefore, it should be adjusted according to the actual situation when it isapplied.