A Study On The Effects Of Write-to-learn Approach On English Writing Self-efficacy And Writing Fluency

Write-to-learn approach refers to the approach of language learning that learners can improve their language competence through writing. Professor Wang(2000) puts forward Length Approach on the basis of write-to-learn, encouraging students to write longer to improve their language ability. Nevertheless, most researches are conducted on the effect of writing tasks on the whole writing ability. The present study aims to examine the effects of write-to-learn approach on writing self-efficacy and writing fluency.This study adopted experiment and questionnaire to investigate how write-to-learn approach works in language teaching practice. The instruments included writing teaching experiment and writing self-efficacy questionnaire. The participants were 89 non-English major sophomores from a university in Jiangxi Province, who were divided into an experimental class and a control class respectively.Before the experiment, they were required to write a given-topic composition; during the experiment, they should write a composition every two weeks, with the control class using traditional writing teaching method and the experiment class using write-to-learn approach; after the experiment, they were asked to write another given-topic composition as the post-test. In order to explore the development of students' writing self-efficacy, this study employed a questionnaire(Cronbach's?=0.792), which consisted of two parts: students' self-evaluation of their general writing ability and their specific writing skills.The findings of the study are as follows. Firstly, there is a significant difference in students' writing self-efficacy between EG and CG after the experiment(P=0.034<0.05). The EG students possess higher writing self-efficacy than the CG students. Secondly, there is a significant difference in students' writing fluency between EG and CG after the experiment. In the study, there are two indexes of writing fluency: the total words of the compositions and the number of words per T-unit(W/T). The difference of writing fluency reaches significant level(P=0.007<0.05 or P=0.019<0.05). In other words, the students in EG behave better than those in CG. The results of the study reveal that write-to-learn approach havepositive effects on writing self-efficacy and writing fluency.Based on the findings presented above, several implications for both learners and teachers are proposed. First, students should do more output tasks to enhance their writing self-efficacy and improve their writing fluency. Second, students should learn mutually, so that they can learn knowledge from each other. Third, teachers should pay more attention to students' affective needs and try to fulfill these needs. Fourth,teachers should change their attitude towards mistakes. Or rather, they should pay more attention to the merits of the compositions and neglect certain grammar or vocabulary mistakes, which could help to enhance students' confidence in writing and foster their interests in learning English.