A Study Of The Effects Of The Continuation Task On The Learning Of English Relative Clauses For Senior High School Students

The continuation task(CT)is an approach of combining reading and writing,and integrating input and output.Initially,some researchers explored its underlying mechanism for promoting learning through theoretical and empirical research.Subsequently,an increasing number of researchers investigated the effects of the CT on language learning,in terms of second language(L2)vocabulary acquisition and L2 writing in particular.In recent years some researchers have examined the effects of the CT on grammar leaning as well.Results indicated that the CT could effectively facilitate grammar learning,providing a brand new route for grammar research.These studies,however,primarily focus on the acquisition of L2-Chinese grammatical structure.Comparatively,few researchers investigate the effects of the CT on L2-English grammar learning,particularly on the acquisition of relatively complicate syntactic structure.The study underpinned by interactive alignment attempts to discover the effects of the CT on the learning of English relative clauses(RCs),aiming to address the following three questions:(1)What are the effects of the continuation task on English relative clause learning for senior high school students?(2)In comparison with the reading comprehension task,what are the effects of the continuation task on the two dimensions of English relative clause learning:comprehension and production?(3)What are the effects of the continuation task on the learning of different types of English relative clauses?Is the acquisition order consistent with Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis(NPAH)?In order to cope with the three research questions,the study was conducted in two intact parallel classes in the second grade of a senior high school in Xinjiang,with 90 students involved.The two classes were randomly assigned as an experimental group and a control group.The experimental group performed the CT;the control group conducted the reading comprehension task(RCT).After three-session treatments,a set of RC testing paper was adopted to examine the effects of learning RCs immediately.After two weeks,a delayed posttest was administered to test the retention of RC learning.Subsequently,eleven students from the experimental group were selected for a semi-structured interview.Overall,the study lasted for about twelve weeks.Quantitative results indicate that:(1)The CT can significantly improve the learning of English RCs for senior high school students.(2)In comparison with the RCT,the CT displays a significant improvement on the production of English RCs;in terms of RC comprehension,both of them can effectively facilitate the comprehension of English RCs.(3)The CT reveals different effects on learning different RC types.Specifically,SU is the easiest to be acquired,followed by DO and GEN respectively,with OPREP being the most difficult to be acquired.It also suggests that the acquisition order just partially supports NPAH.Results in the semi-structured interview reveal that:(1)In order to cohere or align with the preceding text at a situational or linguistic level,students exposed to the CT have the tendency to reread the passage,prompting them to creatively imitate the RC structure of the original passage when producing output.(2)The CT can enhance the noticing of the target grammatical structure,enabling them to detect the mismatch between their input language(IL)form and the target language(TL)form.