An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Reading-enhanced Writing On English Writing In High School Students

Reading and writing are two basic language skills thought to be interrelated as well as relatively independent,and a learner's English competence in reading and writing can be fairly correctly judged through an English writing test.Therefore,in many senior high schools,the teaching of the writing skill is emphasized on an unprecedented scale.It is a fact that in the past 20 years,writing teaching has undergone tremendous changes home and abroad.Teachers and scholars alike have tried a number of ways to improve students' writing skill,hoping that the problems of English writing can be solved through such reforms.But to our disappointment,this has not happened.As a matter of fact,the various forms of reforms in classroom teaching methods and intensive reading practice do not ensure effective writing outcome.In recent years,some have also tried integrating the teaching of reading with the teaching of writing in the classroom.It seems that the results of the experiments are rather positive and encouraging.This study,based on a few prevailing second language acquisition theories,including Krashen's input hypothesis,Swain's output hypothesis,the schema theory,the Frequency Effect of Prof.Bybee's Usage-based theories as well as Prof.Wang Chuming's language exposure theory,tries to explore the effects of enhanced read-to-write teaching approach on senior high school students' English writing through integrating the teaching of reading and writing.It will answer two questions:1.Can the application of enhanced Read-to-write approach improve the senior middle school students' writing skills?2.Can the enhanced Read-to-write approach stimulate the English learners in the senior high school to gain their interest in English writing?In order to answer the two questions,90 students of Grade Two from Jiangmen City No.1 Vocational High School were involved in this experiment,which lasted 4 months.In the experiment,the students were encouraged to learn the relevant vocabulary,sentence patterns and text structures.Different reading materials were used,and learning strategies of imitation,expansion and abbreviation in the teaching strategies were adopted.Before and after theexperiment,questionnaires were conducted to collect information about the students' attitude towards the read-to-write approach.The results show that the application of enhanced read-to-write approach can improve the overall English writing ability of the senior high school students as they performed better in terms of the accuracy and fluency of the English use.The results of the questionnaire also show that the students' interest in learning English is elevated and that the students have more confidence in English writing because of the accumulated language knowledge.