A Study On Effects Of CLT-Based Instructional Approach On College English Writing Performance

English writing, as one of the basic skills that English learners have to master, plays an important and indispensable role in the process of English learning and teaching. Besides, as an integrated skill, English writing displays learners’level of competence in using English. However, the fact is that English writing has been considered the weakest skill of Chinese college learners of English. Although the number of studies on learning and teaching English writing in China are on the rise, English writing is still the stumbling block on the road of improving English learning and teaching.Born in the 1980s, the cognitive-load theory (CLT) aims to explore and solve problems in learning from the perspective of allocating cognitive resources. The theory has made great contributions to some learning-as-a-focus fields of study, such as cognitive psychology, educational psychology and educational technology. CLT has been tested and applied in studies on English learning and English writing, but few of the studies, especially the empirical ones, have touched on the area of teaching English writing. Driven by this gap, the present study intends to examine the effects of adopting the CLT-based approach to teaching English writing to Chinese college learners as compared with applying the traditional approach. Hence, we raise two research questions:1. Will the CLT-based instructional approach has any demonstrable effects on college students’ English writing performance? If it does, which dimensions of students’ writing performance will the approach affect more?2. What attitudes will students take towards the CLT-based instructional approach?To answer the research questions,68 non-English majors, who had just finished their first year of English study at Anhui Foreign College, were chosen for the instruction research. Research instruments included two writing tests, a questionnaire, and an interview. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data generated, the major findings are reported as follows:1. The CLT-based instructional approach has demonstrable effects on improving college students’ writing performance. There were more gains in the dimensions of organization (p=.000) and content (p=.001) in students’ writing than in the dimension of vocabulary (p=.124).2. College students generally take a positive attitude towards the CLT-based instructional approach.Based on the above study and results, potential theoretical and practical implications are discussed, major limitations are pointed out, and specific suggestions are also put forward for future studies.