An Experimental Study On The Application Of Activity-based Approach To Integrated English Reading-writing Teaching In Senior High School

The General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition Revised in2020)advocates an Activity-based Approach to English Learning(ABL),which aims to cultivate the English subject core competencies.Activities are considered as the basic classroom teaching process and an efficient means to develop students’ English subject core competencies.The curriculum standards also point out that teachers should pay attention to the integrated use of reading and writing skills as they mutually support and reinforce each other in the process of language learning.Teachers should design integrated language practice activities to develop students’ language skills.Therefore,based on Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis,Connection Theory of Learning and Constructivist Learning Theory,this research seeks to explore the application of ABL to Integrated Reading-Writing Teaching(IRWT)in senior high school through a teaching experiment to provide implications for further studies in this field.One hundred students from two parallel classes of Grade Two in Xinji High School of Hebei are selected as the research subjects.The researcher implements a teaching experiment that lasts twelve weeks,in which IRWT based on ABL is adopted in the experimental class(EC)and IRWT is adopted in the control class(CC),in an effort to determine the effects of ABL on students’ reading and writing micro-skills.Specifically,this research tries to answer the following three research questions:(1)What is the effect of ABL on students’ skill of reading for details?(2)What is the effect of ABL on students’ skill of inference?(3)What is the effect of ABL on lexical variation in students’ writing?Before and after the experiment,the researcher conducts reading and writing tests on the subjects,and also has a semi-structured interview with three subjects randomly chosen with high,intermediate and low academic level in EC.Then quantitative data is processed and analyzed through SPSS 26.0 and Range 32.0 software and qualitative data is analyzed with content analysis.It is found out that the students’ reading and writing micro-skills have improved in both EC and CC,but students in EC have made greater progress in reading for details and inference as well as lexical diversity in their writings than those of CC.Therefore,it can be concluded that ABL can more effectively enhance students’ skills of reading for details,and inference as well as lexical diversity in writing.Thus,applying ABL to IRWT is of importance to the development of students’ language skills.