A Study On The Application Of Input Hypothesis In The Teaching Of College English Writing For Non-English Majors

College English course is one of the essential courses required for the university students and is a pivotal English language course for non-English majors in China. It has been playing an increasingly significant role in training students to become qualified graduates in China. In the modern society, college graduates are expected to have a higher English proficiency. Therefore, College English Teaching has attracted much attention both at home and abroad.Krashen’s input hypothesis has considerably impact on the nature of pedagogic provision and has been widely applied to English learning and teaching in China. This hypothesis provides a new concept in theory for the second language learning and foreign language teaching, and would produce a wide range of influence in foreign language teaching. Many scholars and foreign language educators have a strong interest in this hypothesis, trying to put this theory in the foreign language teaching.English writing, being an important part of the English teaching process, is an indispensable element in English teaching. Among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), writing is a very essential language skill. Writing ability is a significant component of English language performance for a student. It is particularly important for university students. English writing teaching occupies a vital position in English teaching. Therefore, the test of English writing, as one type of achievement tests, plays a substantial role in English language teaching and learning. How to improve students’ writing ability is the topic many researchers discuss on.Based on the Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, the aim of the thesis is to test the feasibility of reading input and recitation input in improving non-English majors writing ability by putting a teaching experiment into effect. Before the beginning of the experiment, the hypothesis is:1) reading input and recitation input contribute to improving students’ writing;2) students receiving reading input and recitation training perform better than those without getting the training;3) whether reading input and recitation input can improve students’level in the aspects of vocabulary and grammar, and also reduce the number of Chinglish.The subjects are60non-English major sophomores from Xi’an Peihua University. The students in the experiment are from two classes at the Department of Management. Class one is assigned to be Experiment Group (EG) in which the students receive training of reading input and recitation input; Class two is Control Group (CG) in which the students are taught according to traditional method. T-tests by SPSS15.0are used to make an overall check of the writing performance between EG and CG to carry out the statistical analysis. The thesis adopts the research methods which combine qualitative and quantitative studies, with the analysis of students’ compositions being dominant, and interviews and questionnaires being supplementary. It is concluded from the experiment that reading input and recitation input in English writing are both feasible theoretically and practically. In addition, the results of this study are proved to be inspiring and constructive in English teaching and learning, so as to ultimately improve students’ English writing ability and other aspects of English language competence.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is about the study background of English writing, the study aim and significance, as well as the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is the literature review, which consists of theoretical background—Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, optimal input characteristics, Swan’s output hypothesis, Harmer’s balanced activity approach and relevant researches on reading and recitation. Chapter Three is about the current situation of teaching and learning of the college English writing of the non-English majors. Chapter Four is the research design which includes research questions, subjects, instruments and research procedures, and the process of analyzing the experiment which will test the influence of reading input and recitation input on non-English majors writing, compare the results of the EG and CG in pre-test and post-test. Chapter Five is the conclusions and implications of the thesis, including four sections which are summary, implications, limitations and suggestions of the study respectively.