Integration Of English Reading And Writing Instruction Through Backward Design In Senior High Schools

The language ability in the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(NECS)(2017 Edition,2020 Revised)requires students to integrate language knowledge in the real and meaningful context.Under the guidance of the NECS,many teachers have realized that reading and writing can develop with the help of each other.Students read to improve writing,and they write in order to understand the reading better.But a majority of teachers lack the awareness of defining the learning objectives of a unit based on the output.And the formative assessment and summative assessment are ignored to prove that students have achieved the objectives.As the strategy of designing classes,backward design(Wiggins,& Mc Tighe,2005)requires teachers to have a clear understanding of the objectives of each class or unit first.Based on the objectives,they can think about the evidence of students reaching those objectives.And the last stage is to design the instruction.Based on literature review,and the support of scaffolding theory as well as the whole language,the author applies backward design into integration of reading and writing instruction.This research tries to answer the following questions: 1.Can integration of reading and writing instruction based on backward design improve students’ writing ability? 2.If so,what writing ability can be improved?The research lasted four months in Class 7,Grade 11 in No.1 High School in Chongqing University Town.The participants are 46 students in Class 7.There were three stages in this research.In the first stage,the author decided research instruments:questionnaire,students’ writings,students’ writing diaries and interviews with students.In the second stage,through questionnaire,the author had a good knowledge of the current situation of integration of reading and writing.And the author also collected students’ pre-test writing in an examination to have a better understanding of students’ current writing situation.Then the author conducted three topics of classes including the integration of reading and writing classes.After each topic,the author collected students’ writing and writing diaries.After the experiment,the author interviewed five students to further understand their opinion and attitude toward integration of reading and writing.The last stage is to analyze the research data.The author used SPSS to analyze the results of questionnaire and students’ writings,and transferred the records of interviews into words.With the help of the experiment,the author found that students’ writing ability had improved thanks to integration of reading and writing based on backward design,and specifically,their ability had improved in language,structure and logic,and writing contents.Based on the findings,the author presented some suggestions as a reference to the teachers.First,teachers can plan and design the classes as a whole unit based on the output;second,teachers should establish the objectives of the class and the assessment,and present them to the students before the class.There are some limitations in this research.For example,there is only an experimental class without a control class,which will guide the author to do the research further.