Effects Of Different Types Of Task Repetition On English Writing Performance Of Junior High School Students In Writing Teaching

As a language skill,writing can fully examine students’ overall language competence and enhance their ability to "do things in English".Nowadays,in Chinese classrooms,teachers focus more on the cultivation of input skills（listening and reading）while neglecting output skills（speaking and writing）.In addition,in authentic writing teaching,teachers rarely give students sufficient time for systematic writing practice and revise their writing repeatedly.Over time,this has caused some problems,such as lack of fluency,inaccurate use of language.Currently,in task-based language teaching,as a vital task implementation variables,task repetition has attracted much attention from scholars,but existing studies reflect some limitations:for one thing,most focus on the effects of exact task repetition on learners’ oral output,with little on different types of task repetition,especially in writing;for another thing,previous studies mostly concentrate on the immediate effect of task repetition,but whether this effect can be extended to the implementation of new tasks remains to be explored.Therefore,this study applies two types of task repetition into English writing teaching,in order to address the following questions:（1）What are the effects of exact task repetition and procedural task repetition on the fluency and accuracy of junior high school students’ English writing?（2）Whether these two types have the migration effects on the fluency and accuracy of junior high school students’ new task English writing?（3）Are there any differences between the effects of two types on the fluency and accuracy of junior high school students’ new task English writing?This study is based on Information Processing Theory,Output Hypothesis and Trade-off Hypothesis,using a quantitative analysis of research methods.The study lasted for six weeks,with one writing lesson scheduled each week.It was conducted with two parallel classes of 80 students（Class 4,Grade 8;Class 6,Grade 8）in a junior high school in Wuxi,Jiangsu Province.Both classes were taught by the same teacher,and their writing levels showed no significance after pre-test.Class 4 was taught by the exact task repetition（the same content）writing teaching model,while Class 6 was taught by the procedural task repetition（different contents）writing teaching model.Both classes were assigned three times task writing with same or similar topics（two repetitions）and one new task writing,and the post-tests were arranged after the first writing,the third writing and the new task writing.A total of 400 compositions were collected and the data were analyzed by SPSS.Through data analysis,the experiment draws the following conclusions.（1）Both exact task repetition and procedural task repetition have significant positive effects on junior high school students’ fluency and accuracy in English writing.It represents that both of them are beneficial to their English writing performance.（2）Both exact task repetition and procedural task repetition have migration effects on the fluency and accuracy of junior high school students’ new task English writing.It indicates that the effects of both types can transfer,continuing to improve students’ writing performance.（3）When performing a new task,there are no significant differences between the effects of both types of task repetition on junior high school students’ English writing fluency and accuracy.However,the mean value of exact task repetition is higher than that of procedural task repetition in terms of fluency;and the mean value of procedural task repetition is higher than that of exact task repetition in terms of accuracy.Based on the above findings,this study has pedagogical implications:on the one hand,teachers can appropriately increase the repetition of writing tasks to avoid placing students in a constantly changing writing tasks,causing their attentional resources to be consumed in adapting to different forms of tasks.The experiment have confirmed that both types of task repetition have positive effects,so teachers can try to apply both types together.On the other hand,teachers should pay attention to micro-variations in students’ writing,and develop their ability to self-reflect and self-revise their compositions in the repeated practice to effectively improve their English writing skills.