A Study On The Application Of Reading-to-write To English Writing In Senior High School

English writing is one of the basic skills for senior high school students.National English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2003)requires students to write coherent and fully structured short compositions.However,it has been found that there exists a lack of effective guidance on students' writing on the part of English teachers.The problems in the process of students' writing vary from lack of confidence,unclear topics,grammar mistakes to confusion in the organization of compositions.Students' writing ability is far from satisfying.Reading-to-write integrates reading and writing with the intention that students learn from the reading material and thus improve their writing ability.Based on Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis,Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis,and Schema theory,this study explores whether reading-to-write can promote students' confidence and interest in writing and improve their writing ability,especially their writing complexity,accuracy and fluency better than traditional writing instruction.Firstly,two natural classes in Grade Two of Minqin No.1 Middle School were randomly chosen as the participants.Two classes answered a questionnaire and took a writing test,the result of which indicated that they were at the same level.Then Class 1 was chosen as the experimental class and Class 2 the control class.Reading-to-write was employed in the experimental class while traditional writing instruction was used in the control class.Finally,both classes took another writing test and the experimental class filled out another questionnaire.Data were collected and analyzed to answer the research questions.The results of data analysis showed that compared to traditional writing instruction,reading-to-write was better at promoting students' confidence and interest in writing and improving their writing ability,especially at improving complexity and accuracy of students' writing.The application of reading-to-write verifies that reading-to-write is feasible in senior high school and thus enriches writing teaching methods in senior high school.Meanwhile,it is hoped that this study can guide teachers to explore the topics,genres,text structures of the reading materials in the textbook and employ reading-to-write such as summary writing,the continuation task,imitative writing,creative writing and rewriting in their writing instruction.With these reading-to-write tasks,which are in line with the characteristics of students' psychological and cognitive development,students' English writing ability can be improved gradually.