Abstract

Picture books, regarded as a meaningful way to improve children’s reading ability and knowledge acquisition, have been wildly used in English classes. The preference of comprehensive usage of English leads to the multiple and diversified English pedagogy. Among the four English skills, writing competence is regarded as the most challenging and comprehensive one, which needs to be well trained and stressed. As for the students in primary school, their learning depends mostly on visual and auditory information. It is known that better reading ability provides solid foundation for students’ writing ability. Picture books combine vivid drawings and interesting cartoons, which can arouse students’ interests. Thus, the effective writing draws great attention as well as its connection with picture books. In this case, students will be tested to prove whether picture books would lead better performance on English writing in primary school students. Quantitative analysis will be used to measure the test. Students from grade six would participate in the test and their writing records will be measured after each class. There are totally 4 classes. Two are experimental groups while the other two are control groups. Each class will have a writing class in every two weeks and the test will last one month. The data analysis will be conducted every time students finish their writing.

Keywords: picture books, English writing, primary school students, reading，linguistic

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1.-Introduction-1

1.1 Analysis of writing obstacles-1

1.2 Requirement from New English Curriculum-1

1.3 Advantages of picture books-1

1.4 Connection between reading and writing-2

1.5 Cognitive process among primary students-2

2.-Literature review-4

2.1 Iconicity of the pictures and distracting features of picture books-4

2.2 Language patterns, content patterns and systematic structures of students writing.-5

2.3 Reading into writing-6

2.3.1 Memetics-6

2.3.2 Reading-into-writing skills-6

3.-Research design-8

3.1 The research questions-8

3.2 Participants-8

3.3 Materials-8

3.4 Measures-11

4.-Procedure-12

4.1 Pre-test-12

4.2 While-test-12

4.3 Class intervention-14

4.4 After-class interview-14

4.4 Data collection-15

4.5 Results and discussion-15

4.5.1 Results and discussion of research Question One-16

4.5.2 Results and discussion of research Question Two-16

4.5.3-Results and discussion of research Question Three-17

5-Conclusion-19

5.1 Major Findings and Implications-19

5.2 Limitations and Future Expectations-19

6-References-21