Investigating The Effects Of Reading-to-write On English Writing Performance Of Senior High School Students

Reading-to-write(RTW),the integration of reading and writing,is presently receiving increasing attention in second language(L2)pedagogy and research.The present study has continued that focus by investigating the effects of RTW on English writing performance of senior high school students.Based on the review of relevant studies of RTW abroad and at home,this study attempted to explore the following questions:(1)Does RTW influence senior high school students’ English writing performance? If yes,what are the specific aspects?(2)Are there any differences in the effects of RTW between higher-level and lower-level students’ writing performance?If yes,what are the differences?This study was based on the theory of Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis.Besides,the researcher adopted quantitative and qualitative research methods.106first-year students from two parallel classes studying in a senior high school of Jiangxi province participated in this study.One of the classes was the experimental group and the other was the control group.Two writing tests,a 12-week teaching experiment and structured interviews were used to collect research data.To compare the writing performance between the two compared classes,a writing test was administered before and after the experiment respectively.And the teaching experiment lasted for 12 weeks,during which the control group received the traditional writing instruction,while the experimental class received RTW writing instruction.Afterwards,the data collected from writing tests were analyzed by SPSS version 21.Furthermore,interviews were conducted in the treatment class to investigate whether there was a variation in the effects of RTW between higher-level and lower-level students,and what the variation is.Then,the qualitative data gathered from interviews were analyzed using content analysis,in order to further analyze the quantitative data collected from tests.Before the experiment,the pretest results revealed no significant difference in their overall writing performance between the two classes.However,the results of posttest data indicated a significant difference between the experimental and the control groups in their overall writing performance.Furthermore,this study explored the specific effects of RTW on four aspects of students’ writing performance: content,organization,lexis,and grammar.And then,the results revealed significant effects in the aspects of content,organization and lexis,but no significant effect in the aspect of grammar.By the end of the experiment,the researcher carried out interviews with participants in the experimental group to further investigate the different effects of RTW on higher-level and lower-level students.That further investigation suggested that students with higher-level made greater achievements in their writing performance,such as writing content,organization,lexis and writing confidence and motivation.The present study’s findings confirmed the positive effects of the RTW on senior high students’ English writing performance,which offered teachers some insights into the effects of integrating reading and writing in L2 writing instruction.Besides,the researcher provided a few implications for L2 teaching and further research.