An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Length Approach On English Writing Anxiety And Writing Ability Of Senior High School Students

In the language teaching field, in terms of the essential nature and the practical application of language, language input and language output are two inseparable parts though they stick to their own arguments. Language input hypothesis proposed by Krashen holds that learners can acquire language as long as they receive enough comprehensible input; Swain proposes comprehensible output hypothesis believing that Krashen’s input hypothesis overemphasizes the role of input but ignores output, insisting that the actual application is the ultimate purpose of language learning; Wen proposes "output-driven hypothesis" including interpreting and translating for English skill courses reform in China. As the language output, writing is a complex psychological process and is affected by the emotional factors, among which foreign language anxiety is an important factor of learners’emotional state, and faced with English writing tasks, many students often have a certain degree of anxiety and stress, which is not beneficial to improving their English writing.Wang Chuming’s Length Approach is based on the output hypothesis of Swain. It takes the students’ feelings as the breakthrough and aims to regulate the writing length, increase the contents of writing gradually and let the students express their true feelings so that they can reduce their writing anxiety and improve their writing through the elaborate writing tasks. Length Approach, which is tested successfully in English writing at college, proves that it is beneficial to improving students’ sense of learning accomplishment and writing confidence. However, studies on Length Approach related to writing anxiety are few in number. This study focuses on the research of Length Approach applied at senior high school, and it is committed to answering three questions:(1) Can Length Approach alleviate senior high school students’ English writing anxiety? (2) Can Length Approach improve senior high school students’ English writing ability? (3) Does Length Approach exert different influence on high-level and low-level students in terms of alleviating writing anxiety and improving writing ability?The subjects of the study are the 98 students of two parallel classes in Grade one in Ma Chong senior high school, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province. Before the experiment, students of the two classes accepted the test of English writing anxiety and their writing scores were recorded. The result showed that there were no significant differences in both of the two classes in terms of the two above-mentioned aspects. And then they were randomly divided into the control group and the experimental group. For the experimental group, students fell into high-level and low-level according to the pre-test scores of them. The experiment lasted for 18 weeks. Length Approach was applied in the experimental group, while the traditional writing method was used in the control group. Students in experimental group were required to complete a writing task at even weeks,150 words in the first stage,200 words in the second stage, no less than 300 words in the third stage, gradually increasing the number of words in accordance with the requirement of Length Approach, and writings were evaluated at a single week. Control group wrote a 100-word essay every two weeks, marked in the traditional way. After the experiment, two classes were tested with the English Writing Anxiety Scale and writing test again, finally, social science statistical software SPSS17.0 was adopted to analyze the data. The results showed that:(1) Length Approach effectively alleviated high school students’ English writing anxiety. (2) Length Approach significantly improved high school students’ English writing ability. (3) Length Approach exerted greater influence on low-level students than high-level students in terms of alleviating writing anxiety and improving writing ability.This study is only an attempt on Length Approach applied at senior high school, and preliminary evidence proves that Length Approach is also operable at high school, providing some enlightenment to English writing teaching. However, due to the objective factors, this study needs to be further deepened and improved.