The Effectiveness Of Length Approach In Writing For Vccational Cellege Students

Length Approach, a newly created teaching approach, improves students’ writing ability gradually by requiring language learners to write long compositions and further enhance other language skills, which helps further boost their self-confidence. Scholars from many universities have conducted empirical studies about it and obtained satisfying results in universities and middle schools. However, it is seldom used to teach English writing in vocational colleges. On the basis of the previous researches, the present study aims to engage the Length Approach into the current English writing teaching in vocational colleges to address the following two research questions.(1) Can Length Approach improve the English writing ability of vocational college students?(2) Can Length Approach change students’ attitudes towards writing and boost self-confidence in English writing?The thesis provides theoretical foundation of the Length Approach and present research status of Length Approach, which is followed by the methodology of the experiment. Firstly this paper introduces related theories about Length Approach, and also discusses the studies about Length Approach in universities and high schools. Then detailed procedure and specific research methods in this experiment are introduced followed by in-depth data analysis of the present research. Furthermore, implications and suggestions are offered at the end of the thesis. The participants are freshmen majoring in Computer Network and Communication Engineering from two natural classes, from Ningxia Polytechnic College. The two classes are randomly chosen as the experimental group and controlled group and the experimental group are directed by Length Approach while the controlled group are instructed with conventional teaching methods without Length Approach. The data is from three English writing tests in two groups, two questionnaires and two interviews in the experimental group. There has been ten weeks to undertake the research. By analyzing statistics of students’ scores of compositions from the pretest and the posttest, it is clear that Length Approach is effective in improving English writing ability of vocational college students. Besides, the results of questionnaires and interviews in experimental group indicate that the experimental group have achieved higher level of writing confidence than the control group. All in all, the Length Approach is effective in promoting the writing capability and improving writing confidence of vocational college students.