The Application Of Length Approach In Senior High School English Writing Teaching Under The Incentive Evaluation Strategies

Chinese students have always been having problems in learning English, especially in the application of the language, because under the Chinese learning context, most of the students do not have opportunities to use English in real situations, and their learning approach is more of the receptive nature, such as reading and listening, which makes them unable to master the language in the process of using language in its real sense. Besides, there are many learning and teaching methods in the areas of ELT, such as Total Physical Response, Task-based Language Teaching, Communicative Language Teaching and so on. However, these methods mostly focus on listening, speaking and reading, yet writing has not received enough attention. Especially for the senior middle school students, we should pay more attention to training their writing skills and improve their writing ability.This thesis mainly introduces a new method of teaching English writing called Length Approach, which is proposed by Professor Wang Chuming from Guangdong Foreign Language and Trade University. Actually, since the 1970s, in Emig's(1977) research concerning the process of English writing, he holds that writing presents a unique mode of learning, and writing possesses a group of attributes that correspond to certain effective learning, that is"to write to learn". Afterward, many researchers have carried out experiments with the Length Approach. In China, the research of Length Approach in foreign language teaching and learning was attributed to Wang Chuming(2001), who supports that Length Approach is to improve students'comprehensive English skills through writing long compositions, and to decrease some problems for students, such as low epitome ability in English writing , poor expressions, structural monotony ,"chinglish"and so on. Besides, we adopt motivational comments to improve the students'motives and self-confidence in English writing. Length Approach has been carried out as educational reform experiments among 201 undergraduate students in Guangdong Foreign Language at the very beginning, and then in Trade University, Guangdong Industrial University, South China Normal University and Guangdong Professional Technology Institute and other institutions later on. In addition, Length Approach has also been extended to English writing research in senior high schools in recent years. For example, He Sunfu from Fujian Normal University carried out writing teaching experiment with Length Approach in senior one; Yang Congmei from Huazhong Normal University also carried teaching experiment with senior one students in Shunde No.1 Middle School, but she thinks that Length Approach is not applicable for senior one students because the enthusiasm of English writing training is not high enough, and their foundation is not good enough for the teaching training. So in this study, the author adopts Length Approach with the students of senior three, whose foundation in English is better than senior one students, so the Length Approach training can have high efficiency in writing. What's more, English writing accounts for high marks in the College Entrance Exam, so senior three students have high enthusiasm and interest to practice English compositions.This thesis aims to explore the application of Length Approach in English teaching to improve the writing ability of senior high school students with the Incentive Evaluation Strategies. In this study, the following questions are mainly addressed: 1) whether the Length Approach is applicable for senior three students; 2) can Length Approach efficiently and effectively improve their English writing level? 3) can Incentive Evaluation Strategies stimulate their English writing motivation and improve their English writing interest obviously? The experiment lasts four months from September 2010 to January 2011. The subjects chosen for the study are 97 students from two intermediate classes of Grade three students from Yinan No.1 Middle School., Linyi Province. Among them, class 25 with 25 boys and 30 girls is the experimental group, which adopts"Length Approach"writing teaching training; class 26 with 24 boys and 18 girls is the controlled group, which still uses the traditional writing teaching training. The average age of all the students is 18. Both groups of the students are given an English writing test before and after the experiment; and the author conducts the same questionnaire in experimental group before and after experiment. Data collection involved both scores of pretest and posttest and the data is processed by SPSS 17.0.The study found that the average scores among experimental and controlled group has a significant difference: the students of experimental group have made more obvious progress than the students of controlled group; students in experimental group have a high evaluation towards Incentive Evaluation Strategies, and their English writing interest and writing confidence is increasingly enhanced. It shows that Length Approach is applicable for high school writing teaching, and the effect is notable; Students fairly accept Incentive Evaluation Strategies, which is in accordance with students'learning psychology.The teaching experiment for senior high school students shows that compared with traditional writing teaching methods, Length Approach can improve the students'writing level more quickly and more effectively, and can meet the students'learning psychology and study requirements; and Incentive Evaluation Strategies can keep students'interest in English writing and improve the students'writing confidence. Therefore, we should appropriately encourage students at the same time when we adopt Length Approach, which is very important to students'English learning.