A Study Of Reading-to-write English Teaching In Rural Senior High Schools

The National English Curriculum Standards(NECS)for senior high schools issued in 2003 advocates a student-centered teaching model,emphasizing“focusing on improving students’ability of obtaining information,processing information,analyzing and solving problems in English,instilling students’ability of thinking and expressing in English,creating necessary conditions for students’further learning and development”(英语课程标准,2003:6).In terms of teaching and learning English,writing is an important ability to express oneself in English.But the practice of English writing is often ignored by both teachers and students in rural senior high schools.In most rural high schools, it is the teachers not the students who are the main bodies in the classroom. Therefore, the students are very passive in the process of writing, lacking writing motivation and interest. The factors influencing EFL(English as a foreign language) writing are vocabulary, grammar, structure discourse and some other factors such as thinking modes, influences of the native language. This often results in that students write in the mother-tongue and idiomatic way and that students’ English writing is poor in content and way of thinking. All of these can be improved by means of reading English texts or passages. This thesis is to answer the following questions: 1. What is the current situation of English writing teaching in rural senior high schools? 2. How can reading activities facilitate students’ writing in rural senior high schools? 3. How is the method of “reading-to-write” implemented in English teaching in rural senior high schools?In order to find the answers, questionnaires, interviews and class observation are employed in this thesis. The participants are students in senior one and senior two of Ji Tian Middle School as well as all the English teachers in Ji Tian Middle School. For the research, two questionnaires are used. The first questionnaire consists of 15 questions, aiming at find out students’ attitudes to English writing, and the real situation of the English writing and teaching. The questionnaire for teachers is to know the obstacles in English writing teaching. After the questionnaire, the author has some informal interviews to get the most accurate information. According to the research, most rural students are passive in English writing. Their problems lie in vocabulary, grammar, sentence discourse and authentic English expressions as a result of the study environment, teaching methods, the influence of native language and the lack of learning about the English speaking countries’ culture. The teachers in rural schools are focusing on exploring ways only to increase students’ marks. And moreover, they usually have too many teaching tasks. Therefore, most teachers often neglect writing teaching, or can’t find out effect ways to teach students to write in English.The research of this thesis lasts for a whole semester. The author has collected the accurate data, compared and analyzed the results. The research has resulted in the following:(1) Reading can help the students in rural areas in their practice of English writing, helping them organizing their writings, being good at using the words and grammars, being capable of expressing themselves in English;(2) As for the issue that how the method of “reading-to-write” is implemented in English teaching in rural senior high schools, some specific teaching ways and principles are studied and some ways to choose reading materials are presented;(3) Some cases concerned with “reading-to-write” English teaching are presented.