A Research On Reading-to-Write In Senior High English Writing Teaching Based On Scaffolding Theory

As an important form of language output,writing has always been a hot issue in research on foreign language teaching;at the same time,writing is difficult for foreign language learners and most of them hold the view that writing is more difficult than other domains such as listening and reading.The teaching of writing is also considered not easy for foreign language teachers.In traditional English teaching,reading and writing are always taught separately,where the close dialectic relation between reading and writing is ignored.In recent years,more and more researchers have realized the importance of combining reading and writing in English teaching.But most of the previous studies in this field investigate the influence of reading on writing or how the teaching design of Reading-to-Write influences students’ writing ability from a holistic perspective,and few studies take the respective development of vocabulary,syntax and discourse into account.The present study is based on the Scaffolding Theory,which holds that the purpose of teaching is to provide learners with a conceptual framework to understand knowledge,which is based on the “proximal zone” of students and plays a role of “scaffolding” in their learning process.The conceptual framework provided by scaffolding instruction will deepen students’ understanding of learning tasks.The present study tries to answer the following questions:1.What is the influence of Reading-to-Write teaching design on students’ writing from a holistic point of view?2.What is the influence of Reading-to-Write teaching design on vocabulary complexity,syntax complexity and discourse cohesion in students’ writing?3.What are students’ attitudes towards Reading-to-Write teaching design?Two parallel classes from a high school were chosen as the experimental group and the control group respectively and with 50 students in each group.The experiment lasted for 20 weeks,when the experimental group was taught in a Reading-to-Write approach while the control group was taught with a traditional method.Pre-test,after-test and questionnaire research were conducted.The overall mark,vocabulary complexity,syntax complexity,conjunction cohesion and discourse semantic cohesion were selected as the measures of writing quality.The data were analyzed in SPSS.The results show:1.The Reading-to-Write approach had a more positive impact on students’ writing than the traditional approach.2.The Reading-to-Write approach had a more positive impact on vocabulary complexity,syntax complexity,conjunction cohesion but had no influence on discourse cohesion in students’ writing.3.Most students held positive attitudes towards Reading-to-Write teaching design.The present study has important implications for English teaching in senior high schools:1.English teachers should try to make scaffolding for students by integrating reading and writing teaching.2.Students’ discourse awareness should be enhanced during the process of English teaching,so as to help them to improve discourse semantic cohesion.3.Students’ individual differences should be taken into consideration in teaching design,so as to realize individualized teaching.The present study has theoretical and practical significance for senior high English teaching.To integrate reading and writing will enrich the theory of senior high English writing teaching;the method of Reading-to-Write will have some guiding significance for senior high English teaching.