Effect Of Peer-assisted Learning On Senior High School Students Writing Competence In English Continuation Writing Task

English writing,one of vital components of language skills,is a pragmatic activity that cannot be ignored.However,for a long time,the teaching of writing in China has always had the problems of separation of reading and writing,disconnection of input and output.Continuation writing task,put forward by Wang Chuming,provides a new way to solve this problem.However,most students have never been exposed to it before so that they have difficulties with continuation writing tasks.The Outline of Basic Education Curriculum Reform emphasizes that student cooperation should be vigorously promoted.Peer-assisted learning(PAL),which helps students acquire knowledge and skills under mutual assistance,has been verified to have a positive effect on student’s writing performance by scholars at abroad and home.Therefore,the author tries to study whether peer-assisted learning can help senior high school students with their continuation writing task.This study attempts to apply the peer-assisted learning to the teaching of continuation writing task,aiming at exploring the influence of peer-assisted learning on the writing scores,accuracy,fluency and complexity of continuation writing task of senior high school students at different levels.Students from Class 9 and Class 11 of a school in Sichuan Province were taken as research participants,in which Class 9is the experimental class(EC)and Class 11 is the control class(CC).According to the pre-test results,the author divided 44 participants in EC into high-score group(HG)and low-score group(LG).The comparative experiment lasted for 11 weeks,in which every two weeks was a writing cycle,and six writing experiments were conducted.The EC was conducted under the peer-assisted learning mode,while the participants in CC completed the writing task independently.This study intends to answer the following four questions: 1.what is the impact of peer-assisted learning on the writing scores of senior high school English continuation writing task? 2.What is the impact of peer-assisted learning on the writing accuracy of senior high school Englishcontinuation writing task? 3.What is the impact of peer-assisted learning on the writing fluency of senior high school English continuation writing task? 4.What is the impact of peer-assisted learning on the writing complexity of senior high school English continuation writing task?After the experiment,this research analyzed and compared the writing scores,accuracy,fluency,and complexity of participants’ continuation writing task in two classes.Through the analysis of the experimental results,the major findings are as follows:1.Peer-assisted learning can improve students’ writing scores,accuracy,fluency,complexity of continuation writing task.2.Under the peer-assisted learning mode,students’ writing scores,accuracy,fluency,complexity of continuation writing task are significantly improved.3.The accuracy of continuation writing task is significantly improved by the students in HG,and the accuracy,fluency of continuation writing task are significantly improved by the students in LG.4.The improvement of lexical complexity and grammatical complexity of students in HG is better than that of students in LG,while the improvement of writing scores,accuracy and fluency of students in LG is better than that of students in HG.From this,it can be concluded that peer-assisted learning has positive effects on the writing scores,accuracy,fluency,and complexity of senior high English continuation writing task.Therefore,in the teaching of continuation writing task in senior high school,teachers can effectively combine the peer-assisted learning with it.