Correlation Between College EFL Learners’ Writing And Speaking Skills-based On One-topic Tasks

Generally,English teaching focuses on four skills:listening,speaking,reading and writing.Among these skills,speaking and writing are considered to be active,or productive skills,while listening and reading are considered to be passive,or receptive skills[01].In traditional English as a Foreign Language(EFL)classes,the four English skills are usually taught separately.However,various studies show that different English skills may be closely related with each other.Teachers have started to combine different skills in practice,for instance,using input skills to promote output skills.The most common combinations are writing/reading and listening/speaking.Due to the shortage of English teachers,equipment and oral English tests,Chinese oral English teaching still falls behind that of English writing.Nowadays,linguistics and teachers have been exploring different routes in language teaching practice and examining the possibility of combining English writing with speaking.Write-to-speak Approach,a distinctive approach in China,advocates using writing to improve speaking.Some teachers have adopted this approach in their classes.However,only a few empirical studies have been done on the viability of this approach.To add more perspective into this field of research,this paper deals with the issue of productive skills in EFL learning.The participants of this study were students from two classes of English Audio-video Speaking Course(EAVSC)for non-English majors at the authors’university.This study aims to explore the viability of the teaching practice of Write-to-speak Approach,as well as investigate the correlation between Chinese college students’writing and speaking skills in one-topic tasks.The author came up with two research questions:(1)Is there an overall correlation between non-English-major undergraduates’writing and speaking skills?Is the correlation at a significant level?If yes,what is the correlation coefficient?(2)What connections in features can be found in the learners’writing and speaking output?What are the reasons for these connections?The results showed that there is a overall significant correlation between the subjects’ writing and speaking skills.However,for students with lower writing proficiency,there is no significant correlation between the two English skills.The study proved that Write-to-speak practice,in general,has a positive effect on students’oral production.For students with different levels of English writing and speaking proficiency,different features can be found in the output performance in their written and spoken language.For most students,the output in their writing and speaking tasks followed the same logical steps and structure.The students with high English writing and speaking proficiency produced written and spoken language both with rich content,a clear structure,few to none grammatical errors,flexible and complicated vocabulary and sentence patterns.The students with low English writing and speaking proficiency produced written and spoken language with inadequate information and arguments,incohesive structure,more grammatical errors,poor words choice and more simple sentence patterns.The students with inconsistent writing and speaking proficiency usually performed better in writing than in speaking.They produced a relatively long composition with moderate amount of both simple and advanced words,clauses and sentences,with some valid arguments.However,they spoke in English with weaker pronunciation and intonation,more grammatical errors comparing to their written language.For a few students,they performed better in speaking than writing.These students had relatively good pronunciation and intonation and could speak fluently.However,their composition lacked advanced words and sentence structures.In order to realize a balanced development in college students’ English skills,more attention should be paid in teaching students with different English writing and speaking proficiency.Teachers should encourage students to practice more on the weaker English skill.