A Study On The Application Of The Length Approach In Junior High School English Teaching

Now, in China most English teachers pay much more attention to students’ language input. And they have students do a lot of English reading and listening practice. However, the language output has been ignored in some degree. In consideration of such situation of English teaching and learning in China, Professor Wang Chuming in Guangdong University of Foreign studies first proposed the Length Approach in 2000. It is an important development of Swain’s comprehensible output theory in China. The Length Approach emphasizes the enhancement of language output through writing and encourages students to write longer compositions so that they can master language by using it. Wang and his partners had carried out an experiment on the application of the Length Approach among freshmen in Guangdon University of Foreign studies. It had brought satisfactory results that after being trained for a period, students’ writing scores and confidence in writing were both improved. The successful application of Length Approach not only effectively proves that comprehensible output theory has played a great role in China’s second language teaching and learning, but also finds a new efficient way for China’s English writing-teaching.This study tries to apply the Length Approach to English teaching of junior grade seven and aims at finding out whether the Length Approach can help junior grade seven students achieve better results and increase their confidence in English writing and whether it can promote junior grade seven students’ English proficiency and be accepted by them. The subjects of the experiment are 101 students from two classes of junior grade seven in Huilingyuan Experimental Middle School in Dafang, Guizhou Province. The experiment adopts the two-group pretest-posttest method, in which the experimental group is taught with the Length Approach, while the control group is taught in the traditional way. Two tests and three questionnaires are employed to find out the effect of applying the Length Approach to junior high school students. The results of the tests and questionnaires show that the Length Approach can help students in junior grade seven to achieve better results in their writing testand improve their English proficiency. And the Length Approach can effectively increase junior grade seven students’ English writing confidence and accepted by most of them.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, an overview of the whole thesis. Chapter two is the literature review. The theoretical basis of the Length Approach is stated in detail, including the output hypothesis, the affective filter hypothesis and the inter-language theory. The background, the previous research, the characteristics and the teaching mode of the Length Approach are also involved in this chapter. Chapter three is the research design of the study. Chapter four will present and discuss the data got from the experiment. The last chapter is the conclusion of the whole thesis.