Effects Of Reading-to-write On The Language In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

This study was undertaken through experiment to investigate effects of reading-to-write on the language in senior high school students’ English writing.The theories on which this study is based are input hypothesis,output hypothesis and schema theory.Its practical significance is to test the effectiveness of reading-to-write on the language of writing;to provide English teachers with new methods to explore their English writing teaching;and to increase the students’awareness of improving their English writing through reading.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1.What effects does reading-to-write have on the language in senior high school students’English writing in terms of using advanced vocabulary?2.What effects does reading-to-write have on the language in senior high school students’English writing in terms of using complex sentence structures?3.What effects does reading-to-write have on the language in senior high school students’English writing in terms of using proper linking words?The subjects in this study were 53 students from Class 9 Grade 3 of Jinhu High School.The instruments of this study included two writing tests.Writing tasks serving as pre-test and post-test in this research were given before and after the reading task.The data were collected from the pre-test and the post-test by the researcher herself in the writing class.Data analysis involved double scoring and paired-samples t-test.The major findings from this study are as follows:Firstly,the reading-to-write approach.has a positive effect on the language in senior high school students’ English writing in terms of advanced vocabulary.Although the language in their writing in terms of advanced vocabulary improved the least by 0.41 of the three,there was still a significant difference at.05.More advanced vocabulary appeared in their post-test such as acknowledge,essential,crucial,negative,take advantage of,compensate for and so on Two reasons may account for this finding.One reason is the students’ exposure to comprehensible input,that is,the two well-chosen model compositions provide the students with enough language input.The other reason is that the students’ attention to the effective choice of words in the model compositions with a focus on how to use more advanced vocabulary under the teacher’s instruction along with relevant practice.Secondly,the reading-to-write approach has a positive effect on the language in senior high school students’ English writing in terms of complex sentence structures.It improved most by 0.59 with a significant difference at.01.The reason for the students’ great improvement in this aspect may be their imitation of complex sentence structures like attributive clauses,adverbial clauses,noun clauses,inverted sentences,non-infinite verb structures,emphatic sentences,subjunctive mood and so on in the two well-chosen compositions as well as the teacher’s timely instruction.Thirdly,the reading-to-write approach has a positive effect on the language in senior high school students’ English writing in terms of proper linking words.Quantitatively,language in their writing in terms of proper linking words improved by.57 and there was still a significant difference at 0.01.Qualitatively,the students used more proper linking words like however,while,though,for one thing,for another thing,what’s more,worse still and so on.This finding may be due to the fact that there are many alternative useful linking words in the two model compositions.This finding may be attributed to the teacher’s extended teaching related to linking words as well.This study provides some implications.First,in the English writing class,teachers could integrate comprehensible,interesting and relevant reading materials into their teaching to improve students,writing ability.Then,students should be encouraged to read extensively to get enough input for their future writing.Finally,students should be encouraged to form a good habit of reading to focus on the language in the reading materials.This study has several limitations.First,the number of samples analyzed in this study may be not large enough to be generalizable to the other reading-to-write classes.Second,the duration of the experiment conducted in this study is two weeks only,which can’t guarantee its long-term effects on the language in the senior students’ English writing.Third,the design of reading materials for writing practice and the adaptation of scoring criteria are made by the author herself only,so the subjectivity cannot be totally avoided.Finally,various factors which may affect the learning effect are out of the author’s control,such as students’ language proficiency,learning motivation and so on.