Writing, as one of the four basic skills, is a productive process in English learning, which reflects students’ ability to use language. Recently, a new type of writing has appeared in the college entrance examination in Zhejiang province, that is, students are asked to continue to write after reading a part of the passage. Some scholars name this type of writing continuation task which is also called reading-to-write model. And much research and many experiments have been made to this reading-to-write model, like the empirical study carried out by Wang Chuming (2013) to testify the effectiveness of reading-to-write model. In this model, writing is closely connected with reading. When writing, students should fully understand the reading materials and write by following the context of the reading part.

In the traditional writing practices or exams, however, students are usually asked to write topic compositions or semi-topic compositions. It is common, but also a problem. When such writing assignment is set, many students just stare at the topics and requirements, but have no word to say, let alone think about the structures and organizations of their compositions. They write what they think just now, and forget what they have written before. Then the composition is completed like squeezing the toothpaste. As a result, the writing does not flow smoothly and coherently, which can be described as “uneven pacing”. The above is about most students’ attitudes towards traditional writing. Writing seems to be a hard task to them. And when the teachers assess the compositions, they mainly focus on the mistakes in vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammar, but pay little attention to the structure and organization of the writing. And as students do proof-reading, they accordingly correct the grammatical mistakes, and improve the sentence patterns. But the way sentences and paragraphs are combined to form the coherent discourse is not emphasized, or even ignored. Therefore, students’ compositions are lack of coherence and their writing competence is not satisfying.

Aimed at these problems, this research attempts to apply discourse knowledge to reading-to-write model in English language teaching class to enhance students’ writing competence.

As is known to all, discourse is a broad concept which covers many branches. The research here just refers to the genre, cohesion and coherence. In the reading-to-write model, such discourse knowledge is emphasized in the reading stage. When students continue to write, they will be equipped with the discourse knowledge so that the compositions will be well-organized. Therefore this paper aims to discuss how to apply the discourse knowledge of genre, cohesion and coherence to reading-to-write model in English language teaching (ELT) class; and also what effects this approach can bring by integrating reading-to-write model with discourse knowledge.

To answer these two research questions, this research conducts an experiment of applying the discourse approach to reading-to-write model in ELT class in a high school. As the students are just in senior one, an appropriate continuation task including a reading material is first selected. Then according to the reading material and the learning condition of the students, a teaching plan of applying discourse knowledge is designed. The lesson is pided into two stages, and during the reading stage, discourse knowledge is presented by the teacher with the reading material, and while continuing to write, students are asked to follow the context of the reading material and reach the cohesion and coherence in their own writing. After students finish writing, their compositions are collected to be analyzed to see the effect of the discourse approach to reading-to-write model on students’ writing.

As to the significance of this research, from the theoretical point of view, it will apply discourse knowledge to reading-to-write model in English language teaching, which is a relatively useful approach for high school teachers. It testifies the effectiveness of such model and the importance of discourse in writing. In the reading-to-write model, students are able to produce the language output just after increasing the language input, which enhances students’ writing competence unconsciously. While writing, students are aware of the structures and organizations of the reading materials and try to make connections with the reading materials syntactically and semantically. So the research enriches the theories by the experiment. As for the practical significance, there are still many problems remaining in the writing of ELT in high schools. Topic compositions are prevalent in the exams. And as to assessing the compositions, spelling, sentence patterns and grammatical accuracy are mainly focused on, but the discourse level of the writing is often less emphasized, like the overall organization, whether to use the cohesive devices correctly or whether to reach the coherence. So this research illustrates the benefits by applying discourse approach to both reading and writing stage and combining reading and writing in due course to improve students’ writing competence. This research also provides a new approach to writing for teachers in ELT and increases teachers’ awareness of integrating reading and writing with discourse analysis.