The Application Of The Length Approach To Senior High School Students’ English Writing Teaching

English writing has long been the weakest point of English learning to China’s senior high school students. Professor Wang Chuming, a renowned expert of second language acquisition theory, initially proposes a new type of English writing teaching method—Length Approach(2000). The Length Approach emphasizes the language output through writing. It requires students to learn English according to their own interests. The teacher needs to adjust the writing requirement constantly, increase the composition words gradually and encourage students to write compositions as long as they can. It aims to prompt students’ sense of achievement, arouse their learning enthusiasm, improve their self-confidence, and eventually promote English writing abilities and English proficiency. The influence of this teaching method is remarkable, which has attracted great attention of experts and scholars at home and abroad. Southwest Normal University Professor Li Li proposes “moving down theory” of the Length Approach, pointing out that the Length Approach can be applied in high schools. Till now, many scholars have applied the Length Approach to English writing teaching in universities, vocational colleges, junior high schools and even primary schools, but few of them applied it in senior high schools. Based on the previous research results, this study attempts to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of the Length Approach in senior high school English writing teaching, so as to improve the present English writing teaching in senior high schools, thus enhancing students’ English writing ability.This thesis reviews the importance of English writing and the present English writing teaching in senior high schools, thus leading to the necessity of this research. Based on the previous study of second language acquisition theory, the thesis proposes that the Length Approach should be applied to senior high school English writing teaching. This study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) Can the Length Approach improve senior high school students’ English writing awareness?(2) Can the Length Approach help senior high school students enhance their English writing ability?(3) Can the senior high school students enhance their confidence in learning English after they are trained with this approach?This study selects 80 students who are in Grade 2 of No. 1 Senior High School of Chaoyang as the research subjects. The experiment lasts one semester. In the control class(CC), the researcher still uses the traditional method to teach English writing, while in the experimental class(EC) the researcher uses the Length Approach. Questionnaires,tests and interview are applied to ensure the attitude,awareness and self-confidence of senior high school students. The results of this research indicate that the Length Approach is an effective writing teaching method. The students of EC have greatly improved their writing awareness, English ability,confidence and interest. Thus it can be seen that the Length Approach is effective and feasible to be carried out in senior high school English writing teaching.