An Experimental Study On A New English Writing Teaching Model

As a kind of output skill, it is undoubted that writing is important in the EFLT. But writing is probably a difficult thing. Though the teachers and learners spend a lot of time and energy in it, it is not to everyone's satisfaction. The reason is that writing is long affected by the product approach.In the late 1970s, the western linguists put forward process approach, aiming at the weak points of product approach. It focuses on the learners' self-determination and interaction in the process of writing. It becomes the mainstream of writing teaching in the western world. In China, process approach is generalized by the teachers and is proved effective.As the English teaching environment home and abroad is different, the teaching method from abroad is unnecessarily adapted to the practical situation. We should use the foreign applied linguistic research products in a creative way. Length approach, which is initiated by Professor Wang Chuming, from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, appears to meet the need of English teaching environment in China. This approach has been researched and experimented for more than eight years and is proved effective in L2 writing teaching in our country.Taking the advantages of the two approaches, this study is aiming at finding a new writing teaching approach to improve English writing teaching and college students' all-round English communicating competence in China.The thesis is composed of six chapters. The present writer, in the first place, reviews the major EFL writing approaches, and related studies. Next, a new writing teaching approach is introduced. Then the researcher puts forward three research questions: 1) Whether or not the new teaching model is effective for improving students writing skills by means of composition-writing? 2) Whether it can improve students' other communicative competences? 3) Whether the new teaching model is good at arousing students' interests in English writing and learning? In order to achieve these aims, an experiment is conducted.The experiment was conducted among 106 non-English major college freshmen in Northeast Forestry University in Harbin. Two classes of the same level were chosen: one served as the experimental class; the other as the control class. The experiment lasted for 18 weeks, during which the control class received training of the traditional writing approach, and a new writing teaching model was emphasized in the experimental class. The data collected included questionnaires and writing compositions' scores of the pretest and posttest. We conducted quantitative analysis on the data collected by using different analyzing and evaluating devices, including the statistical package SPSS 11.0. Finally, the thesis comes to a conclusion and at the same time makes some suggestions as to the ways of improving the English writing teaching in China. The results of the present study indicate that the new teaching model affects, to some extent, the improvement of the students' composing and communicative competence, as well as the success of arousing their interests in English writing and learning.The present study may shed light on research of similar kinds and serve as reference to college English teachers and students. But due to time limit, the findings are limited and many aspects are ignored. Researches of larger scale on these aspects are expected.