Theories, Practices, Challenges, and the New Tendency in Connecting Reading and Writing

Since the 21th centuary, the similarity views of reading and writing started an ever-lasting enthusiasm for connecting reading and writing. The present paper reviewed the studies in the recent 20 years and categorized them into the following four aspects. First, theoretical investigations were mainly concerned with the dynamic relationships between reading and writing and the cultivation of critical thinking in the connection process. Secondly, contextualized practices from foreign language teachers gave adequate evidence of the possibility and necessity of the integration. Thirdly, in the integration task, various challenges were faced by both the language teachers and the students. Finally, in the digital age, the Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) inevitably started a new tendency.