A Study Of Application Of The Length Approach In English Writing In Senior High Schools

Writing as an integrated productive skill can reflect a learner’s ability of language performance. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the professor Wang Chuming initiated the Length Approach mainly based on the comprehensible output hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis. The Length Approach promotes the notion “write to learn” to add the practice numbers which can improve students’ self-confidence and efficiently turn language competence to language performance. Since the year of 2000, the experiments of the Length Approach have achieved great results. The Professor Li Li from Southwestern University advised conducting the experiment of the Length Approach in the middle schools, at least in senior high schools.Based on the Length Approach, this study was aimed at inspiring students’ writing interest and improving students’ writing ability. The research subjects mainly came from Da Chang Senior High School. The students coming from two paralleled classes in grade two whose numbers are both 40. One of the classes would be as the experimental class adopting the Length Approach and the other one would be the control class taught with the traditional writing approach. Both of the teachers of the two classes are the author. Before the experiment, the author used the results of the questionnaire and pre-test as the pre-data. Then the experiment would be lasted for about three months. After the experiment, the author conducted the questionnaire and post-test once again and added the contents of the interview at the same time in order to ensure the validity of the experiment. The results of the writing tests will be analyzed by the SPSS. The study mainly clarified the following two questions:1. What changes on the interest and attitudes does the Length Approach bring to students in English writing?2. What is the effectiveness of the Length Approach on improving students’ writing?From the results and the discussion about the data, the author concluded that firstly, the students in the experimental class enhanced their confidence and aroused interest in English writing compared with the students in the control class after the experiment. Second, the students in the experimental class improved their writing ability greatly compared with that in the control class.The results of the experiment showed that the Length Approach had an obvious effect on enhancing students’ self-confidence and improving students’ writing ability. Besides, the Length Approach could help students transfer language knowledge into language competence as soon as possible.