An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Textual Enhancement On English Non-Finite Verbs In The Continuation Task

The continuation task,as a new kind of task type closely combining comprehension and production,has been used in high-stake English tests in China since 2016.It has attracted considerable attention since it proved to have a positive effect on language learning.Meanwhile,textual enhancement(TE),as a method of raising learners’ awareness to target linguistic forms through bold fonts,underlining,italic words and other highlighted ways,has also been demonstrated to play an effective role in facilitating language learning.Most relevant studies of the continuation task focus on factors that affect interactive alignment.Some others highlight the effect of alignment on language production such as promoting the acquisition of grammatical forms.Very limited empirical studies have been done to explore methods that attract learners’ attention to target linguistic structures in the continuation task so as to achieve the corresponding facilitative effect on grammar learning.English non-finite verbs are difficult and important grammatical items in English.In line with the acquirement of grammar instruction in National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017),linguistic knowledge is an important foundation of developing linguistic competence.The present study aims at examining the facilitative effect of TE on the intake and acquisition of English non-finite verbs functioning as adverbials in the continuation task.The subjects are 126 senior high school students from three intact classes who are assigned to two treatment groups(a textually enhanced group and a textually unenhanced group)and one control group.The author adopts a quasi-experimental design with a pretest-intervention-posttest(immediate and delayed)sequence.A questionnaire is used after delayed posttest in the textually enhanced group to explore whether the experiment is conducted under the anticipatory experiment condition,and it can also be used as a supplementary explanation to the analysis results of the experimental data.What’s more,it can also be used to investigate if subjects are influenced by other uncontrollable factors during the experimental intervention,making a reference for follow-up experiments.Assessments consist of grammar knowledge tests including multiple-choice sentence completions and fill-in-the-blank tasks.Also,whether subjects can use English non-finite verbs correctly in the continuation task is also considered as important measurement indexes.The results represent that: ⑴The two treatment groups outperform significantly the control group on the grammar knowledge test on posttest(immediate and delayed),and the instructions in the two treatment groups are also facilitative in improving subjects’ usage rate and accuracy rate of using non-finite verbs;⑵The textually enhanced group performs better than the textually unenhanced group on the acquisition of English non-finite verbs;⑶The acquisition effect of English infinitives is superior to that of participles.The findings of the present study prove the effectiveness of raising learners’ awareness in the continuation task on learning target linguistic forms.Some pedagogical suggestions are also put forward in the study.