A Study Of The Effects Of Reading-to-write Approach On Junior High School Students' English Writing

For foreign language acquisition,writing is one of the five basic skills in the learning process.It is not only the direct reflection of the thinking process but also the detection for language learner's integrated competence to the language.As a complex intellectual process,writing is difficult for many Chinese students to master,especially for students in junior middle school.They are seldom able to write a complete and proper English composition even though they have learned English for such a long time.In order to solve existed problems in English writing for junior middle school students,a new writing teaching approach,reading-to-write approach is suggested to be taken.This study,within the framework of Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis,aims to explore the effects of reading-to-write teaching approach in English writing grammar,organization,vocabulary and content aspects for junior middle school students and aims to reveal the effects of reading-to-write approach in raising students' writing interest and confidence.To achieve the goal of the study,two classes with totally 102 students in Grade Three from Kangxian No.1 Middle School participated in the experiment.One was the experimental class(EC)and the other was the controlled class(CC).Before starting the formal experiment,a pre-test was taken for two classes to ensure students' writing competences in EC and CC had no obvious disparity.And then,students in EC practiced English writing with the instruction of reading-to-write approach,and students in CC practiced with the instruction of product approach.The teaching experiment lasted two months.When the experiment was over,a post-test was taken for two classes again to see if there were noticeable differences emerging between EC and CC in writing.In addition,students in EC answered a questionnaire to see if their writing interest and confidence were raised by reading-to-write approach.The results showed positive effects of reading-to-write approach.Firstly,EC group performed better than CC group in writing in terms of grammar,organization,vocabulary and content.Secondly,the results of the questionnaire indicated that reading-to-write approach can improve students' writing interest and confidence.The results of the study suggest that teachers can combine reading and writing in their teaching process to improve students' English writing performances,especially by encouraging students to apply the knowledge learned from reading into their own writings.