On The Application Of The Reading-to-write Approach In Junior High School English Writing Teaching Based On The Text Coherence Theory

Writing is one of the four basic skills that students need to master in their English learning.However,most students neglect the content and organizational structure of the text,which leads to the low quality of writing.Writing teaching is also a challenging task for teachers.Therefore,how to effectively improve the efficiency of the writing class has become the focus of the research.Students come into contact with written texts in reading and writing.Reading,as language input,can provide some support for students to output language in writing.Therefore,in teaching,to establish and strengthen the relationship between reading and writing,especially the connection of text can help students improve the quality of their writing.For textual research,the text coherence theory,on the one hand,can provide the cohesive devices.On the other hand,it can help teachers analyze the reading materials,refine the micro and macro organizational structure of them and instruct learners in writing knowledge.Therefore,this study tries to combine reading-to-write approach and the text coherence theory and explore the effects of this approach on students in junior high school.The subjects of this study are sixty students in Grade Eight in a junior high school in Hangzhou,of which thirty are in the experimental class(EC)and thirty are in the control class(CC).In CC,the product-oriented approach is adopted,while in EC,the reading-to-write approach based on the text coherence theory is adopted.The research instruments,such as tests,questionnaires,and interviews,are chosen,and the data are analyzed by SPSS 20.The research questions are as follows: 1)What are the effects of the reading-to-write approach based on the text coherence theory on students' English writing competence? What are their performances? 2)What are the effects of the reading-to-write approach based on the text coherence theory on students' writing interest,writing confidence and writing motivation? 3)What is the attitude of students towards reading-to-write approach based on the text coherence theory in English writing?The results of the study revealed that: 1)The reading-to-write approach based on the text coherence theory can effectively improve students' writing competence.The scores of the content in EC are significantly improved,which indicates students focus more on content.And the number of cohesive devices used in EC increases by 50%.The use of reference and conjunctions increases significantly,while the use of ellipsis,substitution and lexical cohesion does not change significantly.2)The reading-to-write approach can improve students' writing interest to a certain extent.Students' interest and confidence in writing after the experiment is higher than that before the experiment.The writing motivation has improved.3)Three quarters of students have a positive attitude towards this teaching approach,and think that the combination of reading and writing can help them improve their writing level.In the interview,nearly half of the students say they will continue to use this approach.To sum up,teachers can apply the reading-to-write approach to their writing class and pay attention to the connection between reading and writing.Teachers can extract more knowledge from the texts such as content,language and structure,and design more activities that connect reading with writing to help students use the knowledge when they write their own composition and improve writing competence.