Study On The Effect Of Continuation Writing Teaching Mode On Lexical Richness In High School Students’ English Writing

Continuation writing is a new form of English writing proposed by Professor Wang Chuming（2012）,which closely integrates reading and writing,language input and language output.General Senior High School Curriculum Standards English 2017 Edition suggests that story continuation should be incorporated as one of the main forms of English composition in college entrance examination.With the continuous advancement of the reform of college entrance examination,continuation writing has been adopted as the writing form of English test by many provinces,and has aroused the attention of considerable researchers and educators.In continuation writing,students are required to extend an incomplete story with reasonable contents,coherent plots and rich languages on the basis of the understanding of preceding text.Nevertheless,by analyzing students’ continuation writings,the following questions in their compositions were revealed: lack of rationality,unreasonable cohesion,low degree of harmony,lack of richness and accuracy in language expressions.It is evident that the cultivation of high school students’ continuation writing ability is one of the significant tasks of current English writing teaching.Based on input hypothesis,output hypothesis and interactive alignment theory,this study took one class of senior 2 students in Zhaoqing City,Guangdong Province as participants and carried out an action research for four months.Referring to Wang’s（2012）suggestions on the application of continuation writing and previous continuation writing teaching mode proposed by the predecessors,and combined with students’ current learning situation,this study re-constructed a systematic continuation writing teaching mode and applied it into practical English writing teaching with the aim of promoting students’ writing achievements as well as solving the problem of monotonous use of language and inaccuracy of language expression in students’ writing.Therefore,two research questions are explored in this study:（1）What are the effects of the continuation writing teaching mode on high school students’ writing achievements?（2）What are the effects of the continuation writing teaching mode on lexical richness of high school students’ writing?Adopting qualitative and quantitative research methods,this study implemented two rounds of action research.During the process,the research instruments--questionnaire,interview,classroom observation and tests,along with the tools--Range 32 and SPSS 26.0were adopted to analyze the collected data,so as to explore ways and model to implement continuation writing teaching more effectively,better facilitating students’ improvement in English language competence and providing front-line English teachers with more teaching reference and guidance.By following the research steps of planning,implementation,observation,reflection,adjustment and re-implementation,the study finally reaches the following major findings: 1.The continuation writing teaching mode can significantly improve students’ continuation writing achievements,which can be applied in actual continuation writing teaching by following the eight steps: preparation-lead in-reading comprehension-outline-story enrichment-language appreciation-continuation-evaluation.2.The continuation writing teaching mode can promote the lexical richness in students’ English writing.Especially there were significant improvements in lexical variation and lexical sophistication,as well as evident decline in lexical errors.Therefore,in the future language teaching practice,teachers are expected to adopt appropriate and effective writing teaching methods conformed to students’ learning situation,maximizing the use of continuation writing to facilitate students’ writing achievements and comprehensive language proficiency.