An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Reading-to-write Method On Junior Middle School Students' Writing Performance

As an important way to express emotion,writing plays a very important role in daily learning life.English writing is not only related to the results of examination during this period,but also related to the future of the students.However,English writing is a complex process,requiring comprehensive ability.As a result,it is difficult to master and apply it flexibly in a short time,especially for junior middle school students.In recent years,many researchers have proved that reading can improve students' writing ability,but practice shows that not all the reading can lead to effective learning,especially in junior middle school students.This study is based on Krashen's input hypothesis theory,Swain's output hypothesis theory and Anderson's theory.And a four-month experiment was carried out,centering upon the three research questions:(1)How does reading-to-write method work on students' writing performance?(2)What aspects of writing are promoted more in reading-to-write method?(3)What's the students' perception of reading-to-write method?The research was conducted in Danyang Huanan Experimental School in Zhenjiang,Jiangsu province.The experiment class adopted reading-to-write method and the control class used traditional method.The research findings are:Firstly,reading-to-write can improve students' general writing performance,particularly,in the following four aspects: putting forward ending with personal opinions,having a rich vocabulary and a variety of sentence patterns,using transitional sentences and conjunctions and having clear structure and reasonable section.Secondly,reading-to-write method can help more to middle level students.The obvious improvement of the level of English writing in the intermediate level students illustrates they recognized and accepted the reading-to-write method.They can transfer what they have read to their own writing,so they have a better writing performance in the writing practice.Thirdly,reading-to-write method can improve students' motivation in writing.Reading helps to scaffold for the writing by providing relevant writing content and structure,and students find writing is not that dreadful.More than ninety percent of the students are willing to improve their writing skills by reading.Therefore,some suggestions are made in writing teaching.Firstly,teachers should combine reading and writing in their teaching plan consciously.Secondly,reading class should not only pay attention to grammar and language contents,but also cultivate students' reading skills and reading strategies to improve the effectiveness of reading teaching.Thirdly,as for writing,the teaching process should include the guidance of writing process and the cultivation of writing strategy.