An Empirical Study Of Length Approach In Junior High School ELT

The Length Approach is a new type of writing-teaching method first proposed by Wang Chuming (2000). It is an important development of Swain's comprehensible output theory in China. It not only proves that comprehensible output theory has a great significance to China's second language teaching and learning, but also finds a new efficient way for China's writing-teaching. In China, students have a lot of reading and listening practice. However, they lack proper language output. The Length Approach emphasizes the language output through writing. It aims at increasing students'confidence in writing,and further improving their writing abilities.Aimed at finding an efficient writing- teaching approach fit for junior high school students, this study investigates the feasibility and validity of the Length Approach in promoting English writing at the junior high school level. The subjects of the experiment are 89 students from two classes of Grade nine from Luogang town junior high school, Henan province. The experiment uses the two group pretest-posttest method, and two tests and two questionnaires are employed to find out the effect of applying the Length Approach to junior high school students. The SPSS 16.0 is conducted to analyze all the collected data of the tests and questionnaires. The results of the tests show that students in the experiment group make greater achievements in writing test after three months'experiment than that in the control group. Through the comparison of the results of the two questionnaires, the author found that student'attitudes towards Length Approach have changed and students'confidence in writing has improved after the experiment.The thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction. It is an overview of the whole thesis. Chapter two is a literature review, which mainly includes the theoretical basis of the Length Approach—the Output Hypothesis, and the main content of the Length Approach. Chapter three is the research design of the study. Chapter four refers to the results of the experiment and discussion. This chapter will present the data got from the experiment, and discuss the collected data—the analysis of the two tests and the analysis of the two questionnaires. Chapter five is the conclusion of the whole thesis. It includes the conclusion of the whole thesis, and the implication of the study.The results of this research indicate that the Length Approach is of great significance in English teaching for junior high school students. From the study, the author realizes that the students'English proficiency can be improved through more language output;teachers should change their traditional roles and try to provide more opportunities for students to increase language output. Besides, the teacher should create more ways to increase students'confidence in Learning English. Although there are still some limitations in the study, the study successfully proved that the Length Approach can improve students'writing abilities effectively. And the author makes some changes according to the junior high school students'current language proficiency and put some original ideas in it. The author believes that Length Approach should be applied in more schools, and it is essential for the teacher to lay more emphasis on language output in language teaching.