A Study On The Application Of Random Access Instruction In The English Writing Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

English writing is one of the most important skills needed in vocational collegestudents’ future jobs. However, there is a general phenomenon that most vocationalcollege students do not have the ability to write an appropriate and complete Englishpassage after having learned English for quite a long time. Based on the cognitiveflexibility theory, the present study adopts random access instruction to improvevocational college students’ English writing competence. The research questions areas follows:(1) Is random access instruction effective in improving vocational collegestudents’ English writing competence?(2) Which is more effective in improvingvocational college students’ English writings, random access instruction or traditionalteaching method?(3) What effects does random access instruction have on students’English writing interest and attitude?In this research, the subjects were the freshmen of the year2012from twoclasses of the same level, majoring in Automobile Maintenance in MechanicalDepartment, Jinan Vocational College. One class was chosen randomly to serve as theExperimental Class (EC), and the other was the Control Class (CC). The total numberof the sample is72and each class has36subjects. At the beginning of the research,all subjects were required to write a short English essay as pre-test. Then in theExperimental Class, the teacher would adopt random access instruction while in theControl Class, the teacher continued to use traditional teaching method. Moreover, allstudents both in EC and CC would take another two tests (mid-test, posttest) besidespre-test on English writing during the whole research process and at the end of theexperiment9students in EC were chosen to finish an interview on how do you likethe random access instruction? The results of the experiment reveal that:(1) Randomaccess instruction is effective in improving vocational college students’ writingcompetence.(2) Random access instruction is effective in changing vocational collegestudents’ consciousness of English writing and learning. By using random access instruction, students come to have more interest in their English learning and writingand they are more active in their learning process and more responsible for theirEnglish writing. In a word, random access instruction is more effective thantraditional teaching method in enriching writing content and increasing learninginterest in vocational college students’ English writing.According to the findings of this research, pedagogical implications have beendiscussed. The positive role of random access instruction should be paid attention toin the English writing teaching in vocational colleges in order that students’ Englishwriting ability can be improved. Of course, due to various limitations, the findings ofthe present study should be considered interpreted and tentative with caution. Furtherresearches are needed to get a clearer picture about this topic.