An Action Research Of The Application Of Narrow Reading To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing,as one of the four basic language skills,is regarded as a vital output skill which has gotten more and more attention in English teaching.However,the current of English writing teaching in senior high schools is not satisfactory.The problems of weak writing ability and poor interests in writing among students are still serious in senior high English writing teaching.Therefore,it is very necessary to improve English writing teaching methods.On the basis of National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017),English writing requires coherent content,complete structure,strong logic,clear theme and appropriate language.Narrow reading emphasizes that students read the materials in only one subject matter,or one genre,or the works written by one author so as to strengthen their writing ability in terms of relevant reading materials.Moreover,narrow reading is an effective input activity which helps students repeatedly contact with similar vocabularies,grammatical structure,textual characteristics and background knowledge so as to facilitate students further output in their writing.Therefore,it is feasible to apply narrow reading to senior high school English writing teaching.The research questions of the thesis were demonstrated as follows:1.What are the effects of narrow reading on students' writing ability?2.What are the effects of narrow reading on students' attitudes toward English writing?The researcher conducted narrow reading training,aiming at 40 students in Grade one from one senior high school in Shenyang.The research instruments included questionnaires,interviews as well as tests.The researcher conducted two-round action research which lasted for three months and followed the steps of identifying problems,making the action plan,implementing the action plan,reflecting and evaluating.Before conducting the action research,the researcher implemented some preliminary surveys in order to understand the current situation of students' English writing in senior high school and find out the problems.In the process of first-round action research,the researcher taught the narrow reading texts and conducted relevant writing training.In the second-round action research,the researcher made some adjustment and stressed on the teaching and learning of language expression in English writing.The results showed that narrow reading has positive effects on improving senior high school students' English writing ability in terms of content,structure and language.According to narrow reading,learners can accumulate relevant background knowledge,master relevant text structure and consolidate relevant language knowledge including vocabulary,phrases,sentence patterns.Meanwhile,the students' writing enthusiasm has been greatly improved.They became more active in classroom activities.Therefore,narrow reading changed students' attitudes and enhanced students' confidence in English writing.