A Study Of The “Reading-to-write” Approach Based On The Thematic Context In English Writing Teaching In Middle School

In English teaching,improving students’ writing ability is one of the most important contents in cultivating students’ English core competence.However,teachers still adopt the traditional writing teaching method in middle school,which is mainly grammar-oriented.That is to say,English reading and writing teaching is in a state of separation,and the writing teaching is divorced from the thematic context.Thus,there is no real improvement in the students’ writing competence.Therefore,it is an urgent problem to change the writing teaching method and raise students’ writing level in English teaching.On the basis of Krashen’s input hypothesis,Swain’s output hypothesis,the schema theory,and the process writing theory,this thesis puts forward an integrative reading and writing approach based on the thematic context,called the thematic context-based reading-to-write approach.This study attempts to integrate English reading and writing activities to create the real thematic context for students and increase the language input in some specific aspects,such as language knowledge,the text structure,and the discourse content.Besides,in order to guide students to learn language knowledge and develop language skills in the thematic reading,the author tries to make use of reading materials that are closely related to students’ lives to stimulate their dormant schema.In addition,students are encouraged to transfer the language knowledge they have learned and actively apply it to the writing activities.In the end,the author hopes to achieve the effect of promoting writing by reading.Taking a middle school in Xuhui District of Shanghai as an example,this thesis intends to analyze and discuss the effect of the thematic context-based reading-to-write approach on middle school students’ English writing ability in the teaching experiment.Hopefully,this approach can effectively guide the teaching of English writing and improve students’ writing competence.The subjects of this study are 80 students of Grade 8 from a middle school in Shanghai.During the 3-month experiment,Class4 was the control class,which was instructed with the traditional writing teaching method.In contrast,Class 3 was the experimental class,which was taught with the reading-to-write approach.In addition,the questionnaires,interviews,and writing tests were used to testify the following three questions in the experiment:(1)What is the effect of the reading-to-write approach based on the thematic context on middle school students’ English writing in terms of language,content,and organization?(2)What is the effect of the reading-to-write approach based on the thematic context on middle school students’ attitudes towards English writing?According to the research results,the thematic context-based reading-to-write approach has not been effectively applied in the experimental school.Furthermore,the research results confirm that the thematic context-based reading-to-write approach is feasible and practical.The major findings are presented as follows:(1)The thematic context-based reading-to-write approach can promote students’ overall English writing ability.Students’ writing performance has been improved to some extent,especially in the language expression,the organizational structure,and the discourse content of the students’ compositions.(2)This approach can increase middle school students’ interest in English writing and their motivation for writing.Most students are willing to accept the new teaching approach,improving their writing performance and reducing their writing anxiety.In the end,the author draws some conclusions and gets a few pedagogical implications from the teaching experiment.Firstly,English teachers should activate students’ previous knowledge through text reading,increase the amount of real language input,and scaffold students to use the language.In addition,the writing activity must be an output activity that is highly related to the reading text.Secondly,choosing texts which are based on the same thematic context and suitable for writing lessons is a prerequisite for the application of the reading-to-write approach to teaching English writing in middle schools.To more specific,the difficulty of the text should be within the cognitive level of students.Besides,the theme or topic of texts should be as closely related to students’ life as possible so that it can arouse students’ interest in reading.Last but not least,teachers should adhere to diversified evaluation methods.