Exploring Seventh Graders’ Perceptions of the Picture-word Inductive Model to their English Narrative Writing in China

In this exploratory study, the researcher interviewed 30 seventh graders in China about their perceptions of a new method, the Picture-Word Inductive Model (PWIM). The study found that participants welcomed PWIM and exemplified the positive influence of PWIM on their narrative writing. China has the largest population of English learners and users now: approximately 440 million English-learning and English-using people (see Crystal, 2008), which is a result of the central educational policy of teaching English as a core and compulsory subject for decades. For those many years of teaching English in China, a strong instructional focus has been promoted on grammar, reading, and translation, with a method called “teacher-centered textbook-analysisbased grammar-translation” (Yang, 2000, p. 19). This traditional approach is not the only English teaching approach implemented in China nowadays, because the approach “has failed to develop an adequate level of communicative competence” (Hu, 2002, p.93) and the English learners and users in China need more competence and skills (e.g., writing, speaking, and communicative competence), principally due to economic, political, and social influences. The Picture-word Inductive Model (PWIM), as a new English Language Teaching (ELT) approach that had never been used in China before, might be essential to the ongoing new English education because of its wide recognition and application in educational institutes in North America and Taiwan (Calhoun, 1999; Feng, 2011; Swartzendruber, 2007; Wong, 2009). This instructional approach potentially enables learners to manage the meaning and use of new words, empowers learners from passive learning to active and productive learning by expressing themselves using speaking or/and writing, and helps learners write up paragraphs step by step from adding up words, phrases and sentences. In spite of its delicate narrations, true-to-life scenarios and wide popularity in other places than Mainland China, PWIM has its weaknesses in terms of research studies. Until now, there have been only a few research studies of PWIM (e.g., Calhoun, 1999; Feng, 2011; Joyce et al., 2009; Swartzendruber, 2007; Wong, 2009) since Calhoun’s (1999) research. In those research studies, PWIM is not the only intervention in the learners’ language development, so it cannot be inferred from the results that PWIM alone contributes to the learners’ language development. Moreover, the research studies of PWIM are even fewer when the studies are narrowed down to ESL or EFL learners. There is only one quantitative research study (Swartzendruber, 2007) and one qualitative research (Feng, 2011) found in the literature review, and none of them has been conducted with English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Mainland China. Conceptual Framework English Teaching in China English teaching in China has its peculiar cultural, social and political context; moreover, China has experienced its own particular history of English textbooks and syllabi changes. Historically, English has been taught as a compulsory subject with a strong emphasis on grammar, translation, and reading, mainly through direct instruction approaches (Yang, 2000). Such traditional teaching approaches were characterized by systematic study of grammar,