Teaching Writing through Reading

Article Summary

Stacia, F. (2019, July 15). Why Good Readers Make Good Writers. The Writing Cooperative. Retrieved February 16, 2020 from https://www.writingcooperative.com/why-good-readers-make-good-writers/

According to Stacia (2019) of the Writing Cooperative, reading is a crucial factor is molding better writers in the society. Reading makes people become empathetic; this is a key component which writers use to catch the attention of the targeted audience. Reading stories or written texts by other people tend to put people into the shoes of the characters or objects in the story and enables them to view the world from the same perspective as the subjects in the text, feel what the subject or author feels, and also develop experiences pertaining to these emotions. Based on these effects, a reader is likely to gain a deeper perspective on the topics they want to write about. Also, writing is a procedure that involves a lot of planning within the mind and in most cases may tend to consume a lot of time to create new projects or progress with already existing ones (Stacia, 2019). However, through reading, the tendency to frequently get lost into the psyche of the text’s author creates a habit within a reader; hence making it easier for them to center their focus on a writing project in the long run. Authors to different texts have their unique writing and narrative skills which they use to portray their intended messages: for instance, some authors use woven writing as objected to linear chronology, flashbacks, premonitions, ghazals among others. Therefore, through reading the reader is able to interact with these styles hence converting the reading session into a writing class of its kind. The reader is likely to walk away with knowledge on a few writing styles that they may use in their writing. 

Introduction

English has progressively grown to become an international language; hence demanding communication and expression through English in various spheres of life such as corporate jobs, business, and social gatherings. Therefore, people with difficulties in grasping the language continue to face a challenge in accessing scientific and methodical literature. Writing is a skill that has been subjected to different beliefs and methodologies over the years in the history of communicative language. Based on Tribble (1996) and research by structuralists and audio linguists, writing was started as an instrument that emphasizes definite syntactic and philological designs; and accuracy could only be achieved through practice. Tribble’s study involved scholars who were meant to produce error-free text without giving any preceding sense to the resultant product: these students reported that they only wrote to learn and did not learn to write during the process. However, due to advancement in communicative language, the view that writing can be done without having to understand the meaning of the text has been rubbished off. Modernity has brought the perception and truth that writing is a process that involves several steps which are significant to create an intended piece of work: integration of reading and writing is among these key steps in the process-oriented writing ethos.

Even through writing is an important skill for EFL learners, it is still ignored inside classrooms. Therefore, the resultant effect of this action ignorance is the production of leaners with poor writing and communication skills at the end of their course. Commonly, teachers only ask the students to write during assessments and exams but rarely teach them how to follow through the steps of writing well-structured sentences with semantics. Therefore, this paper endeavors to find the solution to the problem of writing through integration of two language skills: reading and writing. This research is an exertion to explore the level to which the read-to-write model is useful to EFL learners, especially Saudi students; hence achieving a better way to teach writing courses through its integration with reading.

Background Information

Reading and writing are essential components of any language, English included. The development of these linguistic aspects is governed by a complex framework of rules whereby the student is the problem solver who is influenced by the contextual knowledge of the written text. In essence, reading encompasses two elements: encoding and decoding. The involved individual uses their cognitive ability to decipher the material in the text: ultimately, the reader is able to communicate effectively based on obtained information. However, reading has its challenges too, especially in assessing the mastery of content of comprehension of the reader. A group of learners may read the same material in a given period of time, but each one of them will have a different level of understanding of the text: some will have superficial knowledge while others will have in-depth mastery of the content of the text. Therefore, the best way to assess the level of comprehension by the learner is by asking the readers to write a summary of the text or a reflection ( Stotsky, 1983) . Summary writing, or writing of a reflection on a read text performs two functions; assesses the reader’s level of understanding of the text while the summary and reflection assess the writing skills of the student.

Both NES and EFL students require these skills. However, teachers in both EFL and NES classrooms tend to ignore one skill while leaning more on one skill. The ignorance of either skill causes students to either become poor readers or poor writers. Their ability to construct complete sentences and give meaning to their written texts while sticking to grammar rules is usually low on a general scale. Therefore, teachers should always aim to combine both reading and writing skills to their students to develop a complete linguistic learner. Reading has the ability to develop the schemata of a student, plus their prior knowledge of a given topic; hence, impacting their style of writing. With acquisition of more vocabularies, the lexicon of such students also develops thus making them better writers.

Writing is more complex than reading in the sense that the linguistic process requires good mastery of language, phonology, semantics, among other essentials of any language. Reading is not fully demanding of such attributes because the core component that requires mastery in reading is the knowledge for spelling and pronunciation. According to Stotsky (1983), a good reader is not defined by their ability to decipher concepts and ideas from a piece of written text but more of their ability to pronounce words correctly; as per the phonetics rules of the language; and spell them desirably. Therefore, this distinguishes it from writing and makes writing a complex process. A good writer not only has to develop the necessary logical frameworks to support the flow of his ideas in text, but also has a duty to showcase creativity in the use of different language styles; which can only be done when there is a concrete demonstration of outstanding mastery of language. In essence, with good provision of a writing curriculum, learner will master the ideal concepts that can propel their careers as writers as well as grow their abilities to become good communicators ( Stotsky, 1983) . Also, since education involves a lot of reading writing, mastery of these skills will even give teachers an easier task during assessments; learners are able to frame their answers effectively; hence making their point come out clearly. Therefore, teachers do not have to second guess on whatever information the student intended to pass on. 

Better Readers Tend to be Better Writers

Argument For

Writing is a process that encompasses exploration of a person’s thought to discover the ideas within their thought framework and generate meaning out of it. Therefore, given this understanding, reading is an essential tool to realize gist, produce a flawless a piece of writing using thoughts and grammar, and to bring acumen to writing. According to Byrne (1998), writing is an encrypting progression carried out by the expectations of the reader. Also, Nunan (1999) support this idea by defining writing as a composite, perceptive process that needs continuous intellectual exertion over a significant period of time.

The impact that reading has on writing has been depicted through the ideology that positions reading as a tool meant to discover the meaning of a written piece of text through deciphering the words used by the writer. The process of reading is not done with the intention of waiting for the meaning of the text to manifest, but rather, it is executed with aggressiveness and ferociousness to figure out clues to the message the writer intended to pa across (Peha, 2003). Several studies have not been successful to distinctly outline the connection between reading and writing while at the same time progressing the idea that writers must be readers and vice versa. For example, a keen analysis of Battle (1986) research showcases the effort of freshmen in reading and writing as futile because most of them did not seem to grasp reading skills as an important element of the writing learning process. Also, Krashen (1985) hypothesis claims that learners acquire language by understanding the messages; hence further explain how effective this is for students who plan to acquire a second language. 

Still, Brown (1987) affirms that reading has the capability to advance a student’s ability to write due to its effect on the writing process. Brown (1987) concluded that students who were exposed to reading a diversified profile of books, and relevant text tend to gain skills of how they would write and about the subject matter that would form their topics of discussion. This kind of analysis informs on the modern routine in writing course classrooms whereby the learning sessions begin with reading. 

Many researchers have over the years adopted this model whereby reading and writing are linked as complimentary concepts in the learning process, however, the same has not been fully exploited especially for EFL learners. Existing research works have not yet provided a clear and substantive stand on the existing relationship between these two variables. Many researchers agree that the best methodology to maximize on reading to the level that will influence writing, skills is by letting the learners know how their writing pieces are assessed, and giving them a manual on how to read like the writer so that they can grasp the writer’s idea and intentions. According to Smith (1983), reading like a writer has the intrinsic power to enable a learner to actually become a proficient writer in the process: the student tends to learn from the writing style used, the use of syntax, conventions, vocabulary, among other components useful in grammar such as sentence construction techniques. Ultimately, the original writer’s piece becomes a model for the reader to become a writer in future.

Saudi EFL students lack proper knowledge of writing rules and have difficulty in expressing themselves in writing (Barry, 2014). According to statistics from the third edition of The Official Guide to TOEFL Test in 2009, the average TOEFL result in Saudi is 57 out of 120; hence making it the second lowest in the whole of Middle East and among the lowest TOEFL scores worldwide ( Alrabai, 2016) . Several factors can be attributed to this result including both cultural and social influences of the Arabian world. Since the syntax in English is different from Arabic, learning English becomes a bit problematic for Saudi EFL learners; however, the reading-to-write approach will be beneficial in their process to become better English writers. Through reading, these students will be able to get in contact with vocabulary, word sequences, phonetics, and contextual meaning of the text; thus, becoming better writers in the long run. In fact, writing is a non-natural activity that is related to linguistics and cognitive issues which make it an intricate activity for both inborn speakers and language learners (Byrne, 1999). However, writing skills go beyond school; people need them in daily life. For instance, to get a better job, one needs to improve their communication skills and be creative. Communicative inscription has also been associated with improved attitude, well-being, and abridged tension levels for those who do it frequently, according to Adam Grant.

The nature of writing and reading skill are complementarily developed; Johnson (2008) found out that reading aids scholars become improved writers; through reading, students have subsidiary connection with the rules of language syntax, progress a sense of the edifice of the language, and intensify their lexis. Therefore, reading and writing have a mutual relationship whereby reading builds the familiarity of varied kinds to write on while writing emphasizes knowledge in a way that builds plans to read with. In one of the earliest studies, Stocky (1983) found a significant parallel between accomplishment and writing quality as prolific writers incline to be better readers. There is a link between writing eminence and reading experience as creative writers read more than poor writers. There is also a relationship between reading capability and measures syntactic complexity in writing as better readers tend to produce more syntactically established writing than poor readers. 

A deeper comprehension to this relationship between reading and writing can be acquired from the research conducted by Spandel (1996) who holds the idea that a teacher with an honest intention to see their students learn how to read in a manner that will enable them write, appreciates the importance of the reading instruction. This concept has been applied effectively in the reading trait-based model of writing, which has been proved effective in developing strong prolific writers over the years of its application. Also, among the most used writing models is the six-trait model which guides the readers to look for lucidity, thought, backing, detail, organization, diction, voice, sentence rhythm and flow, and conventions in a writing piece; hence, the reader acquires these abilities in the process and grows progressively to become a good writer (Smith, 1983).

According to Smith (1983), the ability to read like a writer is obtained through engaging with the author of a piece of literature, on what they are saying through their writing. In process, the reader has to anticipate what the author plans to say such that it appears as if the writer is writing on the behalf of the reader, and simultaneously engaging in the action with the reader in every word that they read. In this situation, the writer becomes an unwriting partner: everything spelt by the reader is also spelt by the writer, the reader punctuates instantaneously with the writer, the reader performs every expression as the writer, every phrase, every syntax, and every pronunciation is done by the reader and writer at the same time. Therefore, step-wise, and over a significant period of time, the reader gradually develops skills to read like a writer and ultimately write like a writer.

In the same vein, prominent educators such as Hill (1979) and Taylor (1981) broke down reading and writing into ten subskills which they equated as equal. According to Taylor, reading involves the following subskills: identification of the main idea, establishment of support for the identified idea, recognition of the sentences’ sequence, development of inferences, organization of ideas and events, establishing a distinctive line between facts and opinions, recognition of patterns, establishing conclusions from the stated ideas, and from the detail, and ultimately identifying casual relationships. On the other hand, writing encompasses the following sub-skills: devising and phraseology of the primary idea, establishing support for the idea, relating sentences to obtain sense, shaping corollaries, using logic to arrange ideas, supporting opinions with facts, using apt organizational structures, writing deductively, and inductively, and finally analyzing the existing casual chain ( Stotsky, 1983) . Therefore, a close comparison of the ten subskills involved in each process indicates that both reading and writing activate schema about language in a similar manner. 

Also, available empirical evidence extracted from a study by Luu Trong (2012) supports the impact reading has on developing a prolific writer. The student sample for this study comprised two classes of sixty full-time EFL students at University. The two classes were randomly selected to each contain thirty students, and labelled Class A and Class B. Class A was selected to be the control group whereas Class B was the experimental group. A majority of the students in both classes had learned English since their time in senior high school. The two classes of learners were then subjected to a pretest and a posttest: the posttest was issued after exposing the Class B learners to a read-to-write model for nine weeks. Based on these results, students in Class A were better than those in Class B in the pretest. However, the students in Class B were able get fringe development in organization of the writing essay rather than the students in Class A after the nine-week exposure to the read-to-write model. In the posttest, Class B showcased a small improvement in word choice for vocabulary and writing; hence proving that application of the reading-to-write approach is effective in improving the writing skills of the learners. Similarly, the results under the sentence fluency criteria showed a high percentage of students with problems in the pretest for both classes. In the posttest, the results indicated an improvement which also supports the effectiveness of the read-to-write approach advanced by Peha.

Analysis of the convention criteria also supports the above conclusions made on the effectiveness of the advanced model for development of a good writer. The pretest indicated a high number of students with challenges in grammar and spelling: 57% and 47% respectively for Class A, and 70% and 60% for Class B. However, in the posttest the results shifted to become even better with Class B learners showing a greater margin of improvement from their previous status than Class A students, that is, from 70% to 37% in grammatical errors and 60% to 20% in spelling errors. The English performance of the Class A students was better than that of Class B’s in the initial stages, but the trend shifted after implementation of the reading integration to writing just like the Peha model. Also, evaluation of the test scores supports the thesis statement: Class A users demonstrated better scores in the pretest than the Class B learners. Approximately 40% of the learners in Class B scored 5 and below while only 10% in Class A scored such marks. The trend repeats itself in the scores between 5 and 7, and the exceptional scores too. However, there is a change in the posttest scores: a lesser percentage of students who scored 5 and below reduced among the experimental group while their numbers in the score bracket of between 5 and 7 increased significantly. Also, the results and comparison of the two groups using two different syllabuses shows that the integration of reading is more impactful in low level student than it might be in high level learners.

No.	Criteria		Class A  30 students		Class B 30 students
			Pretest	Posttest	Pretest	Posttest
1	Organization	Problem statement	11 (37%)	4 (13%)	14 (47%)	5 (17%)
		Thesis statement	12 (40%)	4 (13%)	14 (47%)	4 (13%)
2	Ideas	Logical ideas	12 (40%)	6 (20%)	16 (53%)	1 (3%)
		Topic break down	11 (37%)	6 (20%)	15 (50%)	2 (7%)
3	Diction	Basic vocabulary	15 (50%)	5 (17%)	18 (60%)	5 (17%)
		Translation from Arabic	23 (77%)	11 (37%)	28 (93%)	12 (40%)
4	Sentence fluency	Unnatural thinking	13 (43%)	9 (30%)	17 (57%)	10 (33%)
		Lack of variety in sentences	21 (70%)	13 (43%)	24 (80%)	10 (33%)
5	Convention	Grammar errors	17 (57%)	10 (33%)	21 (70%)	11 (37%)
		Spelling mistakes	14 (47%)	7 (23%)	18 (60%)	6 (20%)

Table 1. Analysis based on Peha’s criteria

Source: Luu Trong

Counter Argument/Rebuttal

As much as most researchers support the idea that reading has influence on the ultimate writing skills of a student, especially EFL learners, the conclusion might not necessarily be correct. According to some researchers and neuropsychologists, reading and writing are two different processes that cannot be integrated. Neuropsychologists hold onto the knowledge that understanding is an ability that is located on one side of the brain while production of content is also located on another side of the brain. Therefore, since reading involves understanding while writing is production, the two processes are unequal and non-complimentary. Also, both reading and writing are pedagogically and linguistically different from each other. According to Brown (1987), comprehension has more superiority than content production though writing, among children; thus, children may understand more of a given subject or sentence but fail to produce the same when asked to. Also, Bialystock and Ryan (1985) supported this ideology through their research on establishing the relationship between reading and writing. According to their research, reading and writing have one primary difference; writing depends more on detailed analysis of available knowledge whereas reading may not significantly rely on such aspects. The degree of required analyzed knowledge tends to increase with the need for more expressive spelling of words: in this case, recognition of sound or the word in itself may not require as much. In the same manner, imprecise discourse structures may be enough to decode texts but may be insufficient to reproduce the written text.

The skill of reading is receptive; hence it is easily acquired and simple to maintain than the skill of writing which is productive in nature. The process of learning how to read is specially characterized to relate to its institutional nature: the role of the learner in this case is to respond to different types of writing, different difficulties in comprehension of written material, different timelines of production of the texts, and different geographical locations where these pieces were written. On the other hand, a learner in a writing class is obligated to accord the respective language code respect by following all pertaining rules but allowing the flexibility to exploit the volitional and creative aspects of the language up to the level of their ability.

Other researchers such as Beaugrande (1979) argue that reading and writing follow different cognitive processes, that is, while writing is a top-down phenomena reading is a bottom-up process. This group of researchers and educators categorize five cognitive aspects involved in both reading and writing: deep structure, knowledge, meaning, graphic and surface structure, and the conceived surface structure. According to their research, the writer of a text material maneuvers through these aspects in a sequence beginning with knowledge, meaning, deep structure, conceived surface structure, and finalizes with graphic surface structure. Basically, the author needs to have content in his head before making a decision to write; hiss content is equated to knowledge which must be shaped in a way that will deliver the objective of the writer to the readers; hence meaning, and finally it is put down as text in a structure that will guide the reader to the minor details while appealing to their eye at the same time. On the other hand, the reader of a text undergoes an inverse process: graphic surface structure, conceived surface structure, deep structure, meaning, and knowledge. Therefore, based on these structures the curriculum demands of the two language processes are different due to skill instruction isolation. This implies that reading and writing should be treated separately in a classroom, taught at different times, and using different strategies. 

Also, the relationship between reading and writing in EFL students has been subjected to empirical analysis using 150 EFL students enrolled in four faculties in Egypt; Ismailia Faculty of Education, Menoufia Faculty of Education, Al-Arish, and Suez in 1997. The students were issued with comprehension tests which were marked and moderated to produce conclusive results. Based on the results from the analyzed scores, the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient for reading and writing in EFL students was 0.07. Therefore, statistically, there was no significant correlation between EFL students’s reading scores and writing scores; thus, accepting the null hypothesis of the study which was; there is no relationship between reading and writing in EFL students. Based on these statistics, statistical calculation of the coefficient of determination from the above result gives 0.49, or 49%. This implies that either of the variables has 49% effect on the other: 49% is less than half; hence, reading has little impact on writing skills of a learner the same way that writing is on reading skills of any given student. 

Conclusion

Based on the discussion completed by this essay paper, collaboration between the students and the teachers in creating an environment whereby the teachers can discharge their duties in line with the demand and needs of the learner is significant. The paper has succeeded in proving the influence that reading has on writing through the read-to-write approach that positions reading as a tool meant to discover the meaning of a written piece of text through decrypting the words used by the writer. Therefore, this discussion has been successful to noticeably outline the link between reading and writing while at the same time developing the knowledge that writers must be readers and vice versa. For example, a keen analysis of the research results showcased the effort of the Class B learners in reading and writing as successful because most of them seemed to grasp reading skills as an important element of the writing learning process. Also, the learners managed to acquire the language by understanding the messages taught in the adjusted syllabus; hence further explains how effective this is for students who plan to acquire a second language. While the argument disputing the relationship between reading and writing also held water, most researchers tend to agree that as much as the differences between reading and writing can be distinctively separated, the two processes are language skills and, in several ways, complement each other. Therefore, the argument about the distinct cognitive processes and different neuropsychological parts of the brain used is not sufficient to prove that teaching writing through reading does not have impact on the writing skills and abilities of EFL students exposed to a writing curriculum that befits this approach. 

References

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