Writing While Reading And Improvement Of Reading And Writing Ability

Improving students' writing abilities is one of the objectives of English teaching in senior middle schools. At the same time, writing is also a good way to acquire a language. But the fact is that many senior students' writing abilities are far below where they should be, and discrepancy turns out to be tremendous. This has drawn close attention of many linguists and researchers who work diligently in this field. The exploration on reading and writing interaction over the past two decades has found that reading and writing are closely connected and positively interacted. However, until recently in China researches and pedagogical practices on the issue of using writing as response to reading activity for L2 reading comprehension seem quite limited. Basing on practical teaching experiments, this thesis is trying to present a writing-while- reading teaching model which is suitable for Chinese students to develop their reading and writing abilities. That is called "writing while reading" in the paper.Two research questions have been raised as follows:(1) How much does writing-while-reading teaching method benefit students reading and writing ability?(2) How can teachers teach efficiently in a writing-while-reading teaching way in class?The participants in this research project are 60 students from a class in Grade One in a senior middle school in Beijing. They have read 12 pieces of passages and finished different reading and writing tasks related to the passages in their English class during one semester. Their readings and writings' answers and evaluation have been kept and analyzed, which were compared with students' grades in the comparison group.The results of the analysis showed students' reading and writing abilities in the comparison group were far below those of the students in treatment group. At the same time, students' attitudes in the treatment group towards reading and writing became much better. The results showed the writing while reading teaching method is practical and valuable, which is effective in helping students develop their reading and writing ability. Besides, this study also has its problems and limits. The author also offered some practical suggestions for teaching in the wring-while-reading way during the class.