An Action Research Of The Read-to-Write Approach On Senior High School Students’ English Writing

English writing is one of the most difficult skills for Chinese learners to master, which has aroused wide attention of the English educators in our country. Many scholars have studied the teaching method on combining reading with writing, including the relationship between reading and writing, the exploration of the teaching model and the research of the language characteristics and test validity.Based on the Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis, action research was conducted to explore the effects of the Read-to-Write Approach of “readinganalyzing-discussing-imitating” in senior high school writing instruction. Three research questions were discussed in this study:(1) Can the Read-to-Write Approach of “reading-analyzing-discussing-imitating” enhance the participants’ diversity of sentence patterns use?(2) Can the Read-to-Write Approach of “reading-analyzingdiscussing-imitating” promote the participants to use cohesion devices in English writing?(3) What is the participants’ attitude towards the approach of “readinganalyzing-discussing-imitating”?The 10-week study was conducted among 60 students in No.10 Middle School of Maoming city, Guangdong province. Through the questionnaire survey, participants’ difficulties were identified. The writing topics and argumentative genres were selected for training. The first round of action lasted 5 weeks. The topics such as festivals, disasters, studying abroad and healthy lives were trained respectively. The second round also lasted 5 weeks. Argumentative genres including pros and cons categories, positive and negative categories, viewpoints categories and comparison categories were selected as research focuses. At the end of training, tests, questionnaires and interviews were administered. The results were analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The three major findings are as follows: Firstly, the Read-to-Write Approach effectively improves their writing in sentences diversification. Secondly, the Read-to-Write Approach effectively improves their writings in cohesion devices. Thirdly, the Read-to-Write Approach has a positive impact on the participants’ English writing attitude.The implications from the research are that the Read-to-Write Approach puts forward higher requirements for English teachers. English teachers should explain some related sentence patterns and the usage of cohesion devices as much as possible to the students so that they collect some knowledge gained from reading for writing. Meanwhile, imitation is an effective way of language learning. Content creation is combined with language imitation so that their fluency of writing will be improved. Lastly, English teachers should ensure that participants have enough time to read and write.