| As an expressive skill,English writing plays an important role in improving students’ linguistic competence and thinking ability.The results of studies show that reading and writing complement and promote each other.However,English teachers in senior high school can’t integrate input and output organically,which leads to the separation of reading and writing in senior high school English writing teaching.Continuation task is one kind of teaching model proposed by Wang Chuming(2012)based on the theory of Interaction and Synergy,which can stimulate the synergy between learners and reading materials,and improve learners’ performance of language output,especially in terms of accuracy and complexity.However,the current studies mainly focus on the impact of continuation writing on language accuracy,while there are few studies on the impact on language complexity.Thus,this study attempts to apply continuation task to English writing teaching in senior high school in order to explore its impact on the language complexity of senior high school students’ English writing.A quasi-experimental research was carried out in this study for one semester in a senior high school in Nanping City.80 students from two classes of Grade two were selected as experiment participants.Class 5 was chosen as the experimental class and continuation task was applied to English writing teaching,while Class 8 as control class and traditional teaching method was applied in this class.This study attempted to verify the following two hypotheses: 1.Continuation task can better improve language complexity of students’ English writing than traditional teaching method.2.Continuation task can better improve students’ English writing performance than traditional teaching method.The results show that: 1.Continuation task has a significant impact on the lexical complexity of senior high school students’ English writing,except for the following two indexes: NDW and Adj.V.However,in terms of syntactic complexity,continuation task only has a significant impact on the following three index: subordination(C/T,T/S),cohesion(CP/T)and phrase complexity(VP/T).(1)Lexical complexity includes lexical density and lexical breadth.Firstly,in terms of word density,the mean value of word density of senior high school students’ English writing in the experimental class(m=0.543)is higher than that of students in the control class(m=0.511),and there is a significant difference between the two classes in the mean value of word density(p<0.05).Secondly,in terms of lexical breadth,the mean value of indexes(including TTR,VV2,NV and Adv.V)of senior high school students’ English writing in the experimental class is respectively higher than that of students in the control class(m=0.636>0.568,m=0.220>0.198,m=0.787>0.701,m=0.200>0.133),and there is a significant difference between the two classes in the mean value of above indexes(p<0.05).In addition,the mean value of indexes(including NDW and Adj.V)of senior high school students’ English writing in the experimental class is respectively higher than that of students in the control class(m=86.3>74.1,m=0.229>0.176),but there are no significant differences between the two classes in the mean value of above indexes(p >0.05).(2)In terms of syntactic complexity,the mean value of subordination(C/T,T/S),cohesion(CP/T)and phrase complexity(VP/T)of senior high school students’ English writing in the experimental class is respectively higher than that of students in the control class(m=1.379>1.139,m= 1.379>1.010,m=0.308>0.151,m=1.306>1.161),and there is a significant difference between the two classes in the mean value of above indexes(p<0.05).In addition,the mean value of text length(MLS,MLT,MLC)and sentence complexity(C/S)of senior high school students’ English writing in the experimental class is respectively higher than that of students in the control class(m=12.295>11.920,m=12.134>11.596,m=9.277>9.052,m=1.164>1.111),but there are no significant differences between the two classes in the mean value of above indexes(p>0.05).2.Continuation task can better improve students’ English writing performance than traditional teaching method.After the experiment,the average score of the students’ English writing in the experimental class(m=11.236)is significantly higher than that of students in the control class(m=10.249),there is a significant difference between the two classes in the average score of the students’ English writing(p=0.045<0.05).Finally,according to the results of the study and the actual situation encountered in the experiment,the author proposes that teachers should pay attention to the relationship between reading and writing when applying continuation task,and guide the students to analyze the elements of language,text structure and content relevance,so as to help students master effective continuation strategies and improve their English writing performance. |
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