An Experimental Study Of Theme And Context-Based Reading For Writing In Junior High School English Teaching

In English teaching process,reading and writing activities are becoming the main channels to cultivate the students' English core competence.Reading and writing are the indivisible whole and community.They are far from being separated and influenced each other.Particularly,English writing is an indispensable part of teaching,and learners' ability in this skill can show their English level and competence.However,the current situation about English writing of junior high school students is really depressing and English writing teaching is still far from being satisfactory.First of all,reading and writing teaching are disconnected apparently,and it is no more than a scrappy discourse in order to deal with the key information.Secondly,most teachers and students haven't been paying much attention to reading and writing.Students are afraid of English writing,and even get tired of writing classes.They often feel sort of at a loss.Lastly,English writing is the pain point on their learning way.At the same time,English writing is always bothering teachers all the time as well.It goes without saying that it is urgent to solve the problems timely.It's never too late to do.Based on the theories of the Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis,Constructivism and Process Writing,this study proposes an integrative approach of reading and writing,and adopts the strategy of reading to write in the perspective of the theme and context.It attempts to increase the language input in some specific aspects,namely,theme,structure,content,language and thinking.And it came up with the idea of creating the real context by different activities and constructing the framework during writing process to internalize language output.This study mainly intends to explore whether the Theme and Context-Based Reading for Writing Model can improve the junior school students' English writing interests and motivation,and enhance the students' writing ability and competence.Hopefully,this model can promote the writing teaching in the junior high school and make English writing teaching more effective and feasible.The subjects of this study are 110 students of Grade 7 from Xingyi Sunshine Middle School in Guizhou.During the 20-week experiment,Class 11 was the Control Class which was instructed with the traditional teaching method,while Class 21 was the Experimental Class which was taught with the new model.In addition,questionnaire,interview,class observation and writing test in the experiment were used to testify the following 3 questions.(1)Is it possible that Theme and Context-Based Reading for Writing can improve students' writing competence,especially in structure,language,content and thinking?(2)Is it possible that Theme and Context-Based Reading for Writing can arouse the writing interests,motivation of the students in junior high school? What is the students' attitude toward this model?(3)Can this model make different influences on students with different English level?According to the research results,it proved that this model is an effective and feasible approach which can really enhance the students' writing competence,and there is a growing awareness about English writing interests and motivation.The major findings were presented as follows: This model can improve the junior school students' English writing achievements.Especially in sentence structure,content,language and thinking.The students remained positive to accept the new model,which can really raise their English writing interests and motivation.The model can produce different influences to different students.It is more helpful for the students with low level of English writing.A few Conclusions and implications can be drawn from this study.Firstly,Theme and Context-Based Reading for Writing Model is an effective one,which naturally integrates reading and writing and focuses on the same theme.It leads the students not only to read abundant related materials,but also to analyze the useful writing elements and skills,such as language,content and structure.In addition,English teachers should provide a good collection of discourses with different genres and various models about the same theme and context to reinforce language input,create the real writing context,and help the students in many other ways so as to cultivate the students' writing abilities.Secondly,English teachers should inspire the students' writing interests and motivation bit by bit.During English writing teaching,teachers need to choose the best and the most appropriate instructional methods to stir up the students' learning interests and encourage them to write actively.Since the students with diverse backgrounds are the masters of English learning,teachers should constantly adopt the most effective teaching strategies in terms of different students so as to make English teaching more and more feasible.Further more,English reading and writing class is a channel which is to cultivate the students' English core competence.On the whole,in English teaching,teachers should make full use of these strategies to improve language teaching and cultivate persons.