An Action Research On The Influence Of Reading-to-write Tasks On Junior High School Students’ English Writing

English writing is one of the four basic skills of English learning and it is an important part of English teaching.Writing is a reflection of the knowledge of a language and ability of language application.As another basic skill of English learning,reading is a means for the students to acquire language input and improve the logical thinking ability,and at the same time it plays an important role in promoting students’ overall language ability.The purpose of English writing teaching is to improve students’ comprehensive ability to use a language.English writing teaching has always been the key point and difficult point in English teaching,which is the same in English teaching in the junior high schools.In order to solve the problems of time-consuming and low efficiency in English writing teaching in junior high schools,this study employs action research to probe the influence of reading-to-write tasks on junior high school students’ English writing,aiming to explore an effective method for English writing teaching so as to help students form a good habit of reading,analyzing and imitating the model essays and learning to innovate on the basis of imitation.This study aims to answer the two research questions: 1)Do reading-to-write tasks influence junior high school students’ language production? 2)Do reading-to-write tasks influence junior high school students’ attitudes towards English writing?The participants of the study are 22 Grade Nine students from an intact class in a middle school in Guangzhou.The instruments of the study include two questionnaires,one interview,class observation and 132 writing samples produced in 6 tasks.The action research lasted for six weeks and consisted of three rounds of research.Each round lasted for two weeks.During the first week,all the participants were required to finish a writing-only task-finishing a guided writing within 20 minutes.The author then graded and evaluated the compositions and provided the participants with a model composition for them to compare,discuss,analyze and study.During the second week,all the participants were required to finish a reading-to-write taskwriting another English composition which had the same genre and the same or similar topic to that of the writing-only task.They were required to apply the writingskills that they had learned from the model composition to a new writing task and try to imitate the model composition in the aspects of organization,language and coherence.The participants’ writing samples derived from the two different writing tasks were compared with the model compositions from the aspects of organization,language and coherence in order to learn the effect of reading-to-write tasks on the participants’ English writing.Results showed that reading-to-write tasks had a positive effect on the participants’ language production-English writing in the aspects of organization,language and coherence.In addition,reading-to-write tasks changed the participants’ attitudes towards English writing and they became more interested in English writing.It is concluded that reading-to-write tasks are practical and effective in English writing teaching in junior high schools and have significance in improving the efficiency of English writing teaching in junior high schools.