The Experimental Research Of Length Approach To Writing Teaching In Vocational College

College English writing has long been the weakest aspect of English learning in China’scollege students. Professor Wang Chuming initially proposes Length Approach with the basicidea that through placing emphasis on designing good writing assignments and adjusting thelength of writings, learners are compelled to compose increasingly long compositions andsurpass the limitation of foreign language, so as to boost their sense of achievement, enhancetheir confidence and apply quickly what they have learnt to practice. This method is intended toenlighten college English teaching and Wang’s experiments have, in fact, proved that Englishmajors have made progress in English writing through writing long compositions. Is theapproach applicable to the non-English majors in vocational college? The present thesis tries toinvestigate the feasibility and effectiveness of Length Approach of English writing to writingteaching in vocational college. Three questions are addressed:1. What are the opinions of thestudents in vocational college toward Length Approach?2. Can Length Approach be conduciveto improve the writing ability of vocational college students?3. Can Length Approach helpstudents with their English as a whole?78students in Ningbo Dahongying University of Application Techniques of Computer areinvolved in the16weeks’ research. They are from two intact classes of non-English majorfreshmen and randomly assigned to experimental and comparative conditions. The experimentalclass receives the introduction of Length Approach before the study. Questionnaire One andQuestionnaire Two, designed for examining students’ attitudes towards Length Approachinitially proposed by Wang Chuming, are administered to all the students in the experimentalclass respectively before and after the study. All the students in the two classes attend writingtests at the beginning and end of the study, holistic scores of which are compared. The scores ofthe two final examinations (the semester before and in the experiment) are also comparativelyanalyzed. Students’ responses to the two questionnaires and their achievements in writing testsand final tests indicate:1.Length Approach positively improves students’ attitudes towards English writing.2. Length Approach can be helpful to the improvement of their writing ability.The comparison of the holistic scores between the pre-test and post-test reveals that studentsfrom the experimental class made more progress than those from the comparative class.3.Length Approach is able to increase English achievement.The results of the study demonstrate the positive effects of Length Approach in vocationalcollege English class. The use of Length Approach is beneficial and applicable to improvevocational college students’ writing ability. Therefore, the study is capable of giving somefuture implications on the vocational college English writing teaching.