Alignment In The Continuation Task:from The Perspective Of Pauses

Numerous studies have provided evidence for the efficacy of the continuation task in the L2 learning(e.g.,Wang & Wang 2015,Jiang & Chen 2015,Zhang 2017,etc.).What underlies the ‘magic power' of the continuation task is alignment,a socio-cognitive process in which human beings engage in coordinated interaction and adapt to each other dynamically.It has been proposed that the alignment manifested at different levels,including the situational levels and linguistic levels.Alignment at situational levels involves at least five dimensions,that is,time,space,protagonists and objects,intentionality and causation;while linguistic alignment refers to alignment at lexical level,phrasal level,sentential level and so on.In many previous studies,linguistic alignments have been investigated by comparing the learners' outputs with the input material,while the analyses on alignment at situational levels were left open.Through the perspective of pauses,the present study made effort to get a better understanding of the alignment in the writing processes of continuation task.Two questions were addressed to guide the study: 1)How did the writer align with the input material at the situational and linguistic levels when he/she was conducting the continuation task;2)What cognitive activities were involved during the alignment-related pauses?To answer the questions,an empirical study was conducted via two story continuation tasks.Two groups of eight first-year English majors from a college in south China were invited to participate in the study.During the experiment,they were,firstly,required to perform a continuation task individually on a computer,on which a software Inputlog had been installed beforehand to record their whole reading and writing processes.Then,they were asked to watch the replay of the recordings together with the researcher and answer some questions focusing on their pauses,the acts of re-reading and revisions during the writing.The results showed that in most cases the writers tended to align with the input material at the situational levels completely.Protagonists and objects was the key factor in the alignment at situational levels and protagonists played the most important role.As for the temporal and spatial alignment,the writers preferred to align with the material in a complete but implicit way.However,although the writer aligned with input in terms of intentionality and causation,there was only a small number of alignments at such levels.As for linguistic alignment,it showed that although the magnitude of linguistic alignment was rather low,the writers seemed to align with the input material automatically when they were familiar with the linguistic elements.They also intentionally aligned with the material via re-reading with three kinds of aims: 1)to look the details up;2)to look for the word or expression;and 3)to check the spelling of the word or expression.In addition,6 thinking activities and 4grammatical activities were identified in the alignment-related pauses.But what were frequently carried out by the participants during the writing processes are thinking activities as immediate planning,transitions and reviewing,and grammatical activities like word choice.From the discussion of the results,it could be concluded that alignment is a process in which the writers interact with the input material in a dynamic and creative way.It provided evidence to Wang's(2014)claim that the continuation task is a task providing the writers with language to imitate and chances to create.However,there is still a long way to go for the researcher to maximize the alignment in the task so as to strengthen its efficacy in learning.