The Reading Activities For Improving Writing Skill

The effective reading activities in improving writing skills

The Effective Reading Activities in Improving Writing Skills in ESL College Students

Eun Nyeong Seong Janet McNellis PSE 6691 Mon 5:30-8:30pm 4 December 2008

Ⅰ. INTRODUCTION

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Good writing skills are very important to express people’s opinions, feelings and knowledge. People need to write lots of things in their lives: e-mails, documents, business letters and academic essays. When people write something, they cannot meet other people face to face. Thus, they should have good writing skills to deliver their thoughts and ideas exactly to readers. For English as a Second Language (ESL) learner, to have good writing skills seems to be more difficult than other skills: listening or reading. When ESL learners meet American friends, they can talk to each other without problems. They do not mind or concern about their grammar skills, spellings and sentence structures, because each of them just focuses on communication. ESL learners can change and correct the expression if their friends cannot understand what they talk about. In conversation, people can use facial expressions, tone of voice and gestures to support their oral expressions. However, in writing, it is hard to change or correct the writing contents after turning in the paper or sending business letters. The ESL learners have only the written words on the page to make their points, so they must choose words and sentences carefully. If they use vague or inappropriate words, readers may not understand, so carefully chosen words tell readers exactly what they mean (Anker, 2007). Writing skills need more attention and effort than other skills. Therefore, many ESL teachers have researched the effective ways for students to learn writing skills and have applied many different writing methods in their class. Reading and writing are related to each other closely, so good reading experiences effect good writing skills. Reading is more than just good models of writing. It also tells great stories, argues passionately about controversial issues, and presents a wide range of perspectives and information. Sometimes, essays provide ideas for writing and offer chances to become a better reader and writer (Anker, 2007). In writing classes, the ESL instructors use many reading materials to provide main ideas for writing and good writing models. Also, they suggest students to read a lot for having good writing skills. However, there are not many specific reading guides how they read to

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improve their writing skills. If the instructors in reading class consider reading materials that improve writing skills as well as reading skills, it is more helpful for the ESL learner to want to improve their whole language abilities. Therefore, the researcher researches the ESL learners’ reading and writing experiences and find out the effective reading activities in improving writing skills based on their own experiences. This research may help the students who want to improve their writing skills by providing effective reading ideas. Also, it may provide more effective reading activities to the teachers who want to help students’ writing skills.

Research Problem

What kinds of reading activities are most effective in improving writing skills of international ESL college students?

Ⅱ. LITERATURE REVIEW

When someone writes some words and sentences in a foreign language, it means that he/she can read them and understand the meaning of them. People usually can read before write. Written language has different acquisition processes from oral language. In case of the first language (L1) acquisition, learners can naturally learn oral language by be exposed to

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the language through environment. But, they can learn written language by intentional studies and instructions. Second language (L2) language learning has similar processes like L1. When the ESL teachers teach speaking English, they focus on more fluency than accuracy, because the purpose of speaking is communication. If they teach writing skills, they focus on accuracy as same as fluency, because the purpose of writing is the expression of the writer’s intention without misunderstanding. Brown said writing is more than changing from oral language to written language. It needs thinking, drafting and revising which do not develop naturally. ESL teachers should show students how to create ideas, how to organize them and how to revise them which do not teach in speaking class (Brown, 2001). Let’s imagine. ESL learners have writing tasks about a specific topic, but they do not have any background knowledge or do not think about that before. Even if they are good at vocabulary and grammar, they are difficult to start their writing. On the contrast, students have good thoughts in their mind, but they do not know how to write them concretely. They cannot finish their assignments. In that case, reading the other people’s works gives good information and good writing models. Many kinds of reading materials show perfect sentences, well-formed organizations and extended texts. If students want to have good writing skills, they would better to read more. Relation between reading and writing is an interesting topic to ESL teachers and researchers. Reading and writing deal with written English. That is commonly discussed on the impact of reading on writing. Students were generally required extended reading to improve their writing skills. But, we do not imagine that students learn reading skills through learning to write with involving texts of reading (Grabe, 1986). Efficient reading skills become a foundation for the growth of writing proficiency, and composing skills are preceded by the establishment of good reading skills. In the bidirectional view, writing practices can promote the development of reading skills, just as reading proficiency can

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enhance writing skills (Zamel, 1992). Therefore ESL teachers should provide meaningful input, for promoting the construction of meaning, maximizing learner’s evolving, and interdependent reading and writing proficiencies (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005). ESL learners learn some knowledge and skills from reading the texts and writing tasks. Undoubtedly, reading and writing reinforce with the learning of contents, the development of literacy skills, and the acquisition of language abilities in second language learning. Grabe said Reading and writing abilities are highly correlated; however, correlations do not mean casual relations; particularly in the direction from writing to reading. What will be suggested here is : (1) that the relation between reading and writing is not close enough to assume full development of abilities in one from the other-and (2), by extension, that ESL students cannot learn to read by learning to write, by learning discourse grammar only, or by any purely “intensive” approach to reading-since all such approaches assume the reading-writing relationship consists only of converse manifestation of the same process (Garbe, 1986. p33).

In the past, when ESL learners learned writing in English, teachers focused on the final products. Now days, the focus moves from the products to the process. In other words, writing is an ongoing process. The focusing on the final products of writing, such as essay, report, and story, is supposed to meet certain standards of prescribed English rhetorical style, to reflect accurate grammar, and to be organized in conformity with what the readers would consider to be conventional. However, the process approach of writing focuses on students’ composing process such as steps of writing: prewriting, drafting and revising, and feedback from their peers or teachers (Shih, 1986). Ferris and Hedgcock arrange of writing process to six steps: 1) prewriting, 2) planning and drafting, 3) rewriting and revising, 3) feedback, 4) incubation and revision, 5) editing and polishing, and 6) publishing (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005).

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There is an experimental research about teaching writing through reading. Anastacio tried to help the students to improve their writing skills through reading tasks. The students are not ESL learners but the middle school students. At first, he prepared a lot of reading materials, such as new and old literatures, realistic and fanciful literatures, and proses and poetries. Through the processes of transcribing, translating, paraphrasing, condensing, and imitating, students read and reread some works, learned which were good or bad writings, and practiced with writing sentences following the models which they read. Finally, the students could reproduce other writers’ thoughts by daily writing practices and wrote their own creative writings (Anastacio, 1979). It indicates that reading activities supply good sources of writing contents and good models of writing formats. In ESL class, there are many different kinds of reading and writing activities. Some kinds of activities are focused on each specific skill and some kinds of activities are helpful both of them. Sometimes, reading and writing are integrated in ESL class. If teachers find out which activities are more related to each other, they can help ESL learners to learn English effectively by using those activities. Students learn how to write by carefully reading and observing others’ writings. By reading a variety of relevant types of text, students can gain important sight about how they should write and what kinds of subject matter come to their writing topics (Brown, 2001). Reading-based writing tasks encourage students to read like writers (John, 1997; Smith, 1984) and to write like readers (Garriga & Peterson, 2001). The most effective writers learn to image readers’ attributes and to use those attributes to assess their own writings. Such tasks may include reading for meaning, reading for details, drawing an inference, predicting, skimming, scanning, critical reasoning, journalizing, and so forth (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005). Malia (2006) researched the effectiveness of linking the writing course with social issues for ESL learners in college and the meaning of ESL learners’ background knowledge in writing. It showed that linking with courses of social issues and writing courses can benefit

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ESL learners. Therefore, teachers should take advantages of their ESL students’ writing abilities in their first language and their second language. Also, writing instructors should encourage students to improve arguments first and treat grammar secondary. Anker (2007) wrote a writing course book for college students including reading section because reading essays help the college students to develop writing abilities. By reading and looking over how someone else states main ideas, provides supporting details, organizes ideas, they gain better senses of how they write their own essays. Also, reading the essays help students to choose various writing topics because there are many diverse topics: making money, investing, starting your own business, finding a job, raising a family, buying a car at the best price, or protecting yourself from unfairness. The researchers are interested in improve writing skills. They look for the effective way to improve students’ writing skills. Evidently, reading and writing are related to each other, and so teachers suggest the ESL learners to read for writing. There are many different reading materials and reading activities which students choose and experience, but teachers do not suggest specific reading activities related writing. Thus, it needs to research which reading activities more effective in improve writing skills.

Ⅲ. Methodology

1. Participants For this research, the researcher selects 40 ESL learners at the college level. All of them are studying English in ESL classes at Troy University in Troy, Alabama, in the United State. The participants are international students who come from many countries such as Nepal, China, India, Korea. The students who come from India and Nepal have learned

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English as first language in their countries. They have their own language, but they use English in the schools and public places. The students who come from Korea and China have learned English as second language in their countries, so they learn English as one of subjects in schools or private institutions. Their ESL class levels are diverse, ranging from American English Group (AEG) 4 to AEG 6. They are belong to intimidated or advanced levels. Their purposes of studying in ESL classes are to qualify to apply to academic courses in undergraduate or graduate school in Troy University. The classes are face to face lectures and include listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar. The students attend 4 or 5 classes a day from Monday to Friday. The instructors teach the courses with textbooks and other supplementary materials.

2. Measures The participants are asked to answer the questionnaire designed by the researcher. There are four pages in the questionnaire which just wrote in English. The first page is the consent form which asks to permit from the students to participate in the survey: the purpose of the research, what they do in the research, and the participants’ right. In second page, the participants are asked to write personal information: their ages, nationalities, and ESL course levels. In third and fourth pages, there are main questions that ask about the effective reading activities to improve writing skills. The participants answer the questions based on their learning experiences of reading and writing skills in their countries or the ESL classes in USA. The main questions are divided into two dimensions: relation between reading and writing, and reading activities for improving writing skills. Part of reading activities for writing is divided further into three dimensions: reading levels, post-reading activities and reading genre. The questions consist of multiple choice and 4 level Likert scales.

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3. Data Collection For data collecting, the researcher visited the 3 ESL classes. At first, the researcher explained the purpose of the research and what the students do for survey. The researcher delivered the questionnaires to the students. All students read the consent form first and decided if they participated in the survey or not. The students who agreed to participate in the survey actually answered the questions in the questionnaires. During the survey, the researcher was in the classroom and helped and guided them to part in the survey. It took about 20 minutes to fill in the questionnaires. The students asked some questions which they do notunderstand while they were answering. After data collection, the researcher put all of the data in the Microsoft Excel Program and presented descriptive statistics describing the results.

Ⅳ. RESULTS

The purpose of the research is to find out the most effective reading activities in improving writing skills and provide good information about reading activities in ESL reading and writing classes for ESL learners. For this research, 40 ESL learners in college answered the relation between reading and writing and the effective reading activities in improving writing skills based on their experiences in learning of English writing skills.

1. The relation between reading and writing

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Many ESL learners agree that writing is more difficult to learn than other skills: strongly agree 7.5% and agree 52.5%. They feel difficulties with limited vocabulary words, unperfected sentence structures and grammar skills in their writing tasks. What makes writing hard for you? Number

Percent (%)

Limited vocabulary

21

52.5

Sentence structure

17

42.5

Grammar

16

40

Format of essay

5

12.5

Coming up with the main idea

4

10

In the relation between reading and writing, most participants agree that reading and writing are related to each other: strongly agree 27.5 % and agree 57.5%. Thus, they think that reading is good for improving writing skills: strongly agree 30% and agree 62.5%. There are many reading materials around the ESL learners’ life. In the classroom, in the hallway or in the library, they can use lots of reading materials. If they are interested in reading, they choose and enjoy different kinds of reading. Reading materials which the ESL learners like to read and have easy access to in daily life are Web sites, Subtitles on movies or TV and Story books. What kind of reading materials have the ESL learners read? Number

Percent (%)

Web site

28

70

Subtitle on movie or TV

22

55

Story book

18

45

Newspaper

17

42.5

Magazine

14

35

Comic book

5

12.5

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Through reading activities, the ESL learners get lots of useful things for their writing. Especially, they attain good writing formats and styles, good model writings, and good ideas for writing content from reading. What do the ESL learners attain from reading for writing skills? Number

Percent (%)

Writing format and style

30

75

Good model writing

25

62.5

Idea for writing content

23

57.5

Grammar skills for writing

19

47.5

2. The effective reading activities to improve writing skills For finding out effective reading activities to improve writing skills, the researcher divide reading activities into three dimensions: reading levels, post-reading activities and reading genre. The participants tick in 4 scales Likert in a survey questionnaire. The researcher gives some points to each scale: giving 4 points to the ‘very helpful’, 3 points to the ‘helpful’, 2 points to the ‘less helpful’, and 1 point to the ‘never helpful’. Also, the researcher treats all data with a statistic process, analyzes the statistic results and figures out what kinds of reading activities are more effective in improving writing skills. First, in reading level, the ESL learners agree that all levels of reading are useful to their writing. Especially reading vocabulary words, reading sentences and reading short stories with a couple of pages are more helpful to improve writing skills. When they read words or sentences, they can focus on the form more than meaning. They gain some knowledge for writing and use those kinds of knowledge in their actual writing tasks. What kinds of reading level are effective in writing? Reading levels

Mean

The effective reading activities in improving writing skills

Reading vocabulary words

3.4

Reading sentences

3.1

Reading short stories with a couple of pages

3.1

Reading paragraphs with several sentences

3.

Reading essays with a topic sentence and a couple of paragraphs

3

Reading long stories with a book

12

2.6

Second, in post-reading activities, the ESL learners agree that reading and learning key words, reading and summarizing the content, and reading and answering the comprehension questions are more helpful post-reading activities to improve writing skills.

What kinds of post-reading activities are effective in writing? Post-reading activity

Mean

Reading and learning key words

3.1

Reading and summarizing the content

3.1

Reading and answering the comprehension questions

3

Reading and finding the main topic

2.9

Reading and ordering correctly

2.9

Reading and discussing the topic

2.9

Reading and writing book reports

2.7

Reading and writing down the whole passage

2.5

Third, in reading genre, the ESL learners agree that reading magazines or newspapers, reading academic journals and articles, and reading subtitles in movies or on TV are more helpful reading materials to improve writing skills. What kinds of reading genre are effective in writing? Reading genre

Mean

The effective reading activities in improving writing skills

Reading magazine or newspapers

3.2

Reading academic journals or articles

3.2

Reading subtitle in movie or on TV

3

Reading other writers’ model writing

2.8

Reading passages in text books

2.8

Reading literature works

2.7

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The ESL learners agree that reading and writing are related to each other and some reading activities aremore effective in improving writing skills based on their experiences.

Ⅴ. DISSCUSSION

Writing needs more exact expression than speaking because writing is only expressed by using with written language. The role of language in writing is more important than that of speaking. When people speak, they can use voice tone, face countenance, and gestures together to express what they mean to listeners. But, when people write, they should express their message only using written words. It means if people make errors and mistakes in their writings, they cannot deliver exactly what they want to express to readers. Therefore, writing asks for a more perfective form in writing such as vocabulary, sentence structures and grammar. Even though the ESL learners are taking a writing course, it is not easy for them to express written English perfectly, so they agree that writing is more difficult than others. Writing skills are fully developed by actual writing activities, but it needs more effort to learn than other skills. If reading and writing are related to each other closely and some reading activities provide more helpful ways to improve writing skills, they can help the students to learn English writing skills easily and effectively. When the instructors prepare

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activities in reading or writing classes, and if they consider those activities, it is more helpful to the ESL learners. Reading materials, which the ESL learners often read in life, are related to their life styles. Every day the ESL learner use websites to check e-mail, surf for information, or just have fun, so they read on the website naturally and unintentionally. When they watch TV or movies, they use captions or subtitles for helping their listening. They also have a chance to read dialogues. Both of them are not to focus on reading itself, but the students experience reading as well. When they read some pages or books, they concentrate on the contents and texts not the words and sentences. Thus, they get more of a good idea about contents and formats of writing than vocabulary and sentence structures. The effective reading level for writing is dependent upon each individual’s experience; for example, some students agree that reading long stories is very helpful for their writing, but some students agree that reading long stories is never helpful for their writing. All ESL learners have different reading experiences, so their opinions aredifferent as well. It is true that more reading creates more enriched writing. However, if the students find out which reading levels are useful for themselves to improve their writing skills, they can overcome their weakness in writing and solve their writing problems and difficulties. In reading class, learning key words after reading is a helpful way to learn new words and meanings from the context. Summarizing and comprehension questions are also helpful to understand the reading contents, and to use them to their actual writing later. If reading materials can be used in writing tasks, the ESL learners should understand the meaning of them fully. If the students have many opportunities to learn key words and to summarize reading materials, they can improve their writing skills more and more. The students do not read only for writing. They read many kinds of genre every day, naturally as their interests and needs requir. They are young adults, so they are interested in

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watching TV and movies, reading interesting news and reports in newspapers and magazines. Among many kinds of reading material, they agree that reading formal works, such as reports in magazine of newspaper, articles in academic journal, are more effective in improving writing skills. The instructors need to be aware of students’ life styles and topics of interest. The ESL teachers can use those kinds of supplementary reading materials in ESL classes. Each ESL learner has different reading experiences that improve their writing skills. Thus, it is very difficult to decide which activities are the most effective reading activities in improving writing skills. Even though the results show that some reading activities are more effective than others in improving writing skills, it depends on each student’s interests, hobbies, reading habits and reading purpose. If the ESL learners are interested in improving their writing skills, they should try to read more as well as practice writing. For effective reading for writing, they can begin to read from different word and sentence levels from websites or subtitles on TV. In reading class, the ESL learners can do activities of learning key words or summarizing the contents after reading.

Ⅵ. CONCLUSION

Having good writing skills is important to deliver exactly what people express. The ESL learners also need good writing skills to express exactly what they mean. There are many ways to improve writing skills in ESL classes, and reading is one of the effective ways to improve writing skills. Because reading and writing are related to each other and each skill can support to the other, many writing instructors suggest if students want to have good writing skills, they should read a lot consistently. This research, based on the ESL learners’

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experiences, finds out what kinds of reading activities are more effective in improving writing skills. As a result, most ESL learners agree that reading and writing are related to each other and reading is helpful for improving writing skills. Through reading activities, they attain good writing formats and styles, good writing models and ideas for writing. As the effective reading levels, they think that reading words, sentences and short stories levels are more useful to improve their writing skills. Also, they select magazines and newspapers, academic journals and articles, and subtitles on TV or movies as good reading materials for improving their writing. In addition, among many post-reading activities, especially learning key vocabulary, summarizing and reading comprehension activities are more helpful to their writing. Most ESL learners can improve their writing skills through reading by themselves or through reading activities in reading and writing class. For improving writing skills, reading materials should be simple and formal as the students can focus on the form as well as meaning, such as short stories, news articles or journals. Also, reading materials, such as web sites or TV programs and movies, should be reflected in the ESL learners’ interests and life styles. It is more important for them to have reading habits. The writing instructors who are interested in improving students’ writing skills can use reading activities before writing tasks and prepare specific post-reading activities including key vocabulary and reading comprehension in their writing class. This research has several limits. First, this research is limited to specific ESL learners in college, so it is not generalized to all of ESL learners. Second, this research draws conclusions from the ESL learners’ responses, not experimental survey. This research suggests more experimental research about the effective reading activities for improving writing skills in real reading and writing classes. Also, it suggests more survey how to reduce the ESL learners’ difficulties in their writing. Limited vocabulary

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and unperfected sentence structures make writing hard for the ESL students. Through reading, they usually attain good writing formats and writing models, so they need other activities for extending their vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structure. This research indicates that there are some effective reading activities in improving writing skills for the ESL learners. This research expects that many ESL learners and instructors attain good information about improving writing skills. The students will apply their writing skills in actual writing tasksthrough reading and will improve their whole language abilities. Also, the ESL instructor will provide more effective reading activities for students to improve their writings skills and will contribute development of students’ language abilities

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Biography

Anastacio,C. (1979) Writing through Reading http: www. yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/unit /1979/4/ 79.0401.x.html. Anker, S. (2007) Real Writing with Readings (4th edition) NY: Bedford Barbara, K. Grabe,W. (2003) Exploring the Dynamic of Second Language Writing NY: Cambridge University Press. Brown, H.D. (2001) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to language Pedagogy (2nd edition) NY: Longman. Carolyn G (2003) The Role of the Outline in Second Language Composition Academic Exchange spring p.137-140 Dubin,F. Eskey, D.E. and Grabe, W (1986) Teaching Second Language Reading for Academic Purposes : Addison-wesley publishing company. Ferris,D. Hedgcock,J. (2005) Teaching ESL Composition : Purpose, process and practice (2nd edition) Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Hyland Ken. (2003) Second Language Writing NY: Cambridge University Press. Johns, A. M. (1997) Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies. NY: Cambridge University Press. Kieft.M., Rijlaarsdam,G., Galbraith,D.Van de Bergh, H. (2007) The effect of adapting a writing course to students’ writing strategies British Journal of Educational Psychology Sep 2007. Vol 77 p565-578. Malia, J. (2006) ESL college writing in the mainstream classroom (English as second language) Academic Exchange Quarterly. Vol 10.1 Spring 2006 p28-32 Singham,M.(2008) Seven Suggestions for Becoming a More productive Writer The Magazine of High Learning Mar-Apr2008 Vol40 p.40-43 Shil, M. (1986) Content-based Approaches to Teaching Academic Writing TESOL Quarterly

The effective reading activities in improving writing skills

NY: Newbury House. Smith, E (1984) Reading like a writer Victoria, BC: Abel Press. Wen, T. (2007) Teach writing as an ongoing process: Tips for EFL learners on reviewing EFL composition US-China Foreign Language Nov2007 Voi15 p.53-56. Wong, H. & Storey, P. (2006) Knowing and Doing in the ESL writing Class Language awareness Vol 15, No.4,2006 P.283-300. Zamel, V. (1992) Writing one's way into reading TESOL Quarterly, 26,463-485.

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Survey Questionnaire

The Effective Reading Activities for Writing Skills Consent Form You are invited to be in a research study of the effective reading activities to improve writing skills in ESL college students. I ask that you read this document and ask any questions you may have before agreeing to be in the study. The purpose of this study is to find out effective reading activities to improve writing skills and help ESL learners' writing tasks. If you agree to be in this study, I will ask you to do the following things: answering the questions in the questionnaire designed by the researcher about your opinions about relationship reading and writing skills, and your experiences about reading and writing activities in ESL learning. It will take about 20 minutes for you to complete the survey. I never share your answers about your personal information, opinions and experiences of reading and writing skills with anyone else. After you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw at any time without any problems. Your decision of whether or not to participate will not affect your standing with Troy University. There is no risk in participating in this study. This study will benefit teachers of students who do not know English well. The researcher conducting this study is the student whose major is post secondary education in graduate school in Troy University. You may ask any questions you have now. If you have questions later, you may contact the researcher at 334-482-9449 or Dr. McNellis ([email protected]). Please keep a copy of this statement for your records. Thank you. Nov 2008 Eunnyeong Seong

The effective reading activities in improving writing skills

Personal Information Answer the questions 1 through 3 by writing answers and question 4 through 6 by marking with a ‘ ’ in the appropriate items or write an open-ended answer. 1. AEG level : ____________

2. AEG experience : ________ months 3. Nationality : ___________________ 4. English is my _____ first (official) language or ______ second (foreign) language.

5. Age: ___19-24 ___ 25-29 ___ over29 6. I am taking ESL course to …

____ improve my general English skills. ____ meet an academic course in undergraduate or graduate school ____ other (

)

21

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Relation between reading and writing Answer the questions 1 through 5 by your responses with a ‘ ’ in the appropriate box and the questions 6 through 8 by checking one or more. strongly agree

1. 1 2 3 4 5

agree

disagree

strongly disagree

2. Writing is more difficult to learn than other

skills Reading and writing are related to each other. 3. Reading is good for improving writing skills. Writing is developed through writing activities. To integrate reading and writing course is better than to separate learning reading and writing.

6. What makes writing hard for you? Check all that apply.

____ Grammar

____ Coming up with the main idea

____ Sentence structure

____ Limited vocabulary

____ Format of essay 7. What kind of English materials have you read besides your English text book? Check all

that apply. ____ Story book ____ Newspaper

____ Magazine

____ Web site

____ Subtitle on Movie or TV

____ Others (

____ Comic book )

8. Why do you think reading is good for improving writing skills? Check all that apply.

____ Because I attain ideas for writing content. ____ Because I attain good model writings. ____ Because I attain grammar skills for writing. ____ Because I attain writing format and style. ____ Reading does not improve writing skills ____ Other (

)

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Reading activities to improve writing skill Answer the questions by marking your responses with a ‘’ in the appropriate box.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

What kinds of reading activities have helped Very helpful improve your writing skills? Reading vocabulary words Reading sentences Reading paragraphs with several sentences Reading essays with a topic sentence and a couple of paragraphs Reading short stories with a couple of pages Reading long stories with a book Reading and finding the main topic Reading and learning key words Reading and answering the comprehension questions Reading and summarizing the content Reading and ordering correctly Reading and discussing the topic Reading and writing down the whole passage Reading and writing book reports Reading other writers’ model writing Reading literature works Reading passages in text books Reading magazine or news papers Reading subtitle in movie or on TV Reading academic journals or articles

More helpful

Less helpful

Never helpful

What other activities improve your writing skills? ___________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________