Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Withsmaller vocabulary and poorer comprehensive language application ability, moststudents tend to be afraid of English writing. Without positive feedback, enough inputand students enough attention to the feedback, it is really hard for junior high schoolstudents to improve their English writing ability.English learners generally highlight reading. The process of readingcomprehension involves translation. While people pay more and more attention toEnglish application skills, listening and speaking are practiced more, but the same isnot true with English writing. Few schools train English writing skills particularly.Books on English writing for English beginners are seldom seen. The students areeven puzzled with methods of improving English writing. For many years experts andscholars regard university students as the targets of their research on English writingteaching. They have been paying less attention to junior high school students Englishwriting. In recent years empirical researches of senior middle school English writinghave appeared, but still there are few researches on junior high school Englishteaching. As a way of achieving communication goal, writing is a reflection oflanguage knowledge and language application ability. Therefore, the research onfactors affecting the improvement of English writing ability is necessary, and theapplication of the factors in the research of the methodology of writing teaching ismore practical. This kind of research could help English learners find out methods ofimproving their writing.
.........
1.2 Objectives of the Study
According to the New Curriculum Standards for junior high schools, listening,speaking, reading and writing are four basic skills and requirements for the students.However, the students EFL writing ability in junior high schools is not so pleasantand encouraging. This study aims to study the integrating reading and writing andshow the advantages of applying the integrating reading and writing in junior highschools.The study advocates that writing should be integrated with reading so that the students can enlarge their vocabulary in reading, learn how to use languageappropriately, how to apply their background knowledge, how to arrange thesentences, how to organize the composition, how to achieve coherence and unity andhow to activate their mind when writing. In this way, the students can improve theirwriting ability effectively and efficiently. Therefore, the thesis tries to analyze thepresent reading and writing situation in junior high schools, show the application ofintegrating reading and writing in EFL writing practice and prove the effectivenessand practicality of integrating reading and writing.
..........
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Approaches on English Writing
For more than half a century, English writing has been a central research topicfor applied linguistics. As various schools of English writing theory develop and therelevant researches deepen, the research both home and abroad on writing teachingand factors influencing writing level are becoming richer and richer. In the moderntime, many teaching schools appear in the area of writing practice. Approaches of theresearch on the modes and methods of English writing teaching done by experts andscholars can be grouped into the following groups:Product approach appeared before the 1960s. It is an approach to writingteaching long used by our country. It origins from "the form method" and "thetoday-tradition method" of schools in Western writing teaching. It mainly analyzes theproblems of students compositions in rhetoric, grammatical rules, modes of articledevelopment, and writing techniques. And then it provides improving methods to helpstudents gradually enhance their writing ability (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996). Productapproach is based on structural linguistics and behaviorist theory. Structuralismapproaches language from the perspective of
