An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Reading-to-Write Approach In Junior High School Student’s English Writing

Writing is one of the most important skills that student of various levels need to learn.So the teaching of writing is considered an indispensable part in teaching of most,if not all,languages.English as a lingua franca is taught in almost all schools in China.However,the teaching of this language is not quite satisfied.Things get worse when it comes to its writing teaching and learning.In junior high school,most students pay less attention to or show less interest in writing learning.The reasons can be manifolds.But one of it might be because of the traditional old ways of teaching on the teacher’s part.What makes it worse is that the time that is used to finish a whole piece of writing in class is not enough according to the author’ observation during her internship in a certain junior high school.The worst thing is a lack of appropriate guidance from the teacher as to how the writing tasks should be fulfilled in class.There will be many ways to deal with the problems mentioned above on the teacher’s part.But one of influential ways of improving writing teaching might be the reading-to-write approach.Though there are some researches in this area,it needs further proving of its effectiveness on the Junior high school students.This research will have a try of this task.More technically,it aims to test its feasibility and explore the ways of teaching by integrating this approach with the relevant theories,such as the input hypothesis,output hypothesis,schema theory,and most importantly Vygotsky’s scaffolding theory.The aim of this research will be achieved by answering the following questions:(1)How do the junior high school students feel for the reading-to-write approach?(2)How can the reading-to-write approach boost the student’s interest and confidence in English writing teaching class? What is the best way to implement this approach?(3)How do teachers employ the reading-to-write approach to train the junior high students’ writing ability effectively?90 students of grade eight in a junior middle school in Huainan city are chosen as subjects in the research.Two classes have participated in the experiment.Class 1serves as the experimental class(EC),class 2 the control class(CC).The two classes are both taught by the same English teacher and the same textbook is used in the class.Reading-to-write approach is applied to Class 1,while the traditional teaching method is used in Class 2.Either quantitative or qualitative methods or both at the same time are employed to analyze the data of the questionnaires,tests and interviews during the four months study.In the actual teaching in the experimental class,reading activities are used at intervals as the scaffolding;the standard teaching steps of reading,which are pre-writing,while-writing and post-writing,are added to the reading-to-writing approach.In the end,we get the following results through the data analysis:Firstly,after the 4-months experiment,the students’ attitude towards reading-to-write approach has changed from negative to positive.They participate in the activities joyfully and cheerfully.Secondly,the research proves that reading-to-write approach is helpful in boosting the students’ confidence to write and awakening their interest in writing as well.Thirdly,the writing skill improves a lot in the experimental class(class 1)compared with that of control class(class 2),which means that the reading-to-write approach is helpful in improving students’ English writing competence.In addition,we get the implication through the research that reading and writing are the two sides of one same coin and they benefit each other mutually,one improving along with the other.However,there appear some opposite opinions among the interviewees concerning the application of this approach.Some teachers think that it would cost much time when adopting this approach in writing class,that is,it is time-consuming.In addition,some think that the implementation of teaching details are problematic and needs to be improved.However,most teachers interviewed have been inspired by the reading-to-write approach and say they will have a try of this approach later on.Finally some advice are offered to the teachers.First of all,it is important to make the students aware of their reading as the input for writing and writing as the output of reading.Teachers should encourage students to accumulate writing materials by reading extensively.Meanwhile,teachers should provide timely support for students in the respect of input in and out of class.Most importantly,teachers should apply this approach consistently throughout the whole academic year.