Effects Of Reading Orientations On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Performance

How to improve English writing has always been concerned and valued in English teaching in secondary stage.Based on the well-acknowledged theories in the second language acquisition（SLA）,such as Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis,Noticing Hypothesis and Production-oriented Approach,the present study focuses on the reading-scaffolding instruction of English writing by Chinese senior high school students.Specifically,it intends to address the research questions as follows:1.What are the effects of reading orientations on the overall English writing performance?2.What are the effects of reading orientations on English writing fluency?3.What are the effects of reading orientations on English writing accuracy?4.What are the effects of reading orientations on English writing complexity?The subjects of the present study were 164 students from Gaoyou No.2 Senior High School,who were divided into three experimental groups（EGs）and one control group（CG）.The present study adopted a pretest-posttest research design,and the treatments for three EGs were three kinds of pre-writing reading orientations,i.e.,contented-oriented reading for EG1,form-oriented reading for EG2,and content-and-form-oriented reading for EG3.As for CG,the treatment was brainstorming plus group discussion before the writing task,which is a normal approach to English writing at senior high schools in China.The EGs and CG shared the same writing tasks during the same duration of time,yet they distinguished from each other in their exposures to the pre-writing reading with different orientations.The experiments were conducted in authentic English writing classes,and the subjects’ pretest and post-test writings,in the pen and paper format,were collected one week before the experiment and right after the experiments respectively.The experiments as well as the pre-and post-tests were all carried out by the researcher herself so as to ensure the internal validity of research to the greatest extent.All the writings were then marked holistically by a group of three experienced English writing teachers before the subjects’ writings and their scores were typed into a computer and double checked twice to ensure the authenticity of the data.Based on the relevant studies home and abroad,four parameters were adopted to measure the effects of different reading orientations on the subjects’ English writing,i.e.,overall performance,fluency,accuracy and complexity of their English writing.The overall performance was generated by the holistic scoring of the students’ English;the fluency of English writing were measured via words per minute,clauses per minute and error-free clauses per minute;the accuracy were measured via error-free words per words,error-free clauses per clauses and error-free T-units per T-units;and the complexity were measured via words per T-units,words per clauses,dependent clauses per clauses and chunks per words.All the data were analyzed via Excel and SPSS software in line with the research questions.Specifically,the pre-and post-test comparisons were conducted via paired-sample T-tests,and CG-EGs comparisons were generated via One-Way ANOVAs.The results of data analysis generate the following findings:First,in terms of the overall English writing performance,there were no significant pretest differences between CG and EGs,indicating all the groups were genuinely homogeneous before the experiment.After the experiment,there were significant posttest differences between EGs and CG,and all the three EGs considerably outperformed CG with EG2（form-oriented）ranking top,EG3（content-plus-form-oriented）the second,and EG1（content-oriented）the third.This not only provides solid evidence for the scaffolding power of prewriting reading in L2 English writing instruction and also further demonstrates the distinctively scaffolding effects of reading orientations on high school seniors’ L2 English writing.Second,in the terms of English writing fluency,three EGs outperformed the CG in the numbers of the words,clauses,error-free clauses per minute.Among the EGs,the fluency of EG2（form-oriented）is significantly higher than EG1（content-oriented）and EG3（content-and-form-oriented）,whereas the CG has no significant progress in writing fluency between pretest and post-test.This proves the facilitative roles of prewriting reading orientation in English writing.Thirdly,in terms of English writing accuracy,three EGs again outperformed the CG in the post-test writing,though there were no significant differences in the pretest writing.Also,the numbers of the error-free words,error-free clauses and error-free T-units have all witnessed significant increase,with EG2（form-oriented）ranking top among the 3 EGs whereas no significant increase was found in the CG.Fourth,in terms of complexity,all the three different kinds of reading orientations failed to trigger significant effects on English writing performance.The ratio of the words per T-unit,the words per clauses,the dependent clauses per clauses and the chunks per words did not increase significantly from the pre-to post-test writing.This indicates that reading as an input task in nature has limited facilitative power for the improvement on the L2 English writing complexity.The above findings shed pedagogical implications as follows:teachers should carefully choose reading material,adopt appropriate reading modes according to the actual situation of students,pay more attention to the teaching of linguistic forms based on the content of the text,put emphasis on the time-limited writing training of students,and focus on the fluency,accuracy and complexity of their writing,making the most of limited classroom resources to maximize teaching effects,thereby improving students’ writing skills.