Effects Of Pre-Task And Post-Task Metalinguistic Explanations And Language Analytic Ability On The Past Counterfactual Conditional Accuracy In High School Students’ English Writing

There is substantial theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that form-focused instruction is beneficial to second language learning and the effectiveness is dependent on various factors.The pedagogical timing of form-focused instruction(FFI)is one of them.Considerable amount of empirical research over the last decade has demonstrated the positive effect of integrated FFI,while the empirical studies investigating the role of form-focused instruction are still not enough.Isolated FFI is considered as explicit instruction(EI)that usually takes place in isolation from the actual meaningful writing process,which can be operationalized as pre-task metalinguistic explanation(ME)and post-task ME.Regarding research concerning isolated FFI instruction,little has been done to examine the comparative effects of pre-and post-task MEs on grammatical accuracy in second language(L2)writing.Therefore,the current study reports on a classroom-based study that examined the comparative effects of the timing of El,namely,pre-task ME and post-task ME on English past counterfactual conditional accuracy in second language writing,and the extent to which the language analytic ability,as one single component of learner differences in language aptitude,moderates the effectiveness of two types of ME on the acquisition of English past counterfactual conditional in L2 writing.The research was designed to address the following research questions:1.Does a pre-task metalinguistic explanation(ME)affect the past counterfactual conditional accuracy in high school students’ English writing?2.Does a post-task metalinguistic explanation(ME)affect the past counterfactual conditional accuracy in high school students’ English writing?3.Is there any difference between pre-and post-task MEs as regards their effects on the past counterfactual conditional accuracy in high school students’ English writing?4.To what extent does the language analytic ability mediate the effectiveness of pre-and post-task MEs?A total of 93 subjects from a high school in Jiangsu Province,China were invited to participate in the study.They were from three intact classes,randomly assigned into three groups:the pre-task group(31),the post-task group(31)and the control group(31).Three text reconstruction tasks were used as pre-test,immediate posttest and delayed posttest.Language Analytic Ability Test was administered for assessing students’ language analytic ability.The target linguistic structure for learning was English past counterfactual conditional.All scores were entered into SPSS 25.0.The major findings are summarized as follows.In terms of the first and the second research questions,the two experimental groups outperformed the control group to a great extent,suggesting the efficacy of providing pre-task and post-task MEs on the past counterfactual conditional accuracy in L2 writing.And both experimental groups showed significant longitudinal gains,which proved the durability of these two kinds of explicit instruction.As regards the third research question,the results demonstrated that the effects of pre-task ME had advantages over the post-task ME in enhancing written accuracy regarding the target structure.Regarding the fourth research question,language analytic ability proved to be positively correlated with the performance of the two experimental groups.To put it in another way,there were positive links existing between language analytic ability and the learning benefits gains in the texts of two experimental groups.Additionally,the language analytic ability was more strongly linked to gains achieved in the pre-task group than that in the post-task group,indicating language analytic ability was more likely to generate learning benefits when learners are provided the pre-task ME.The findings of the present study confirm the positive effects of receiving pre-task and post-task MEs and learners with relatively higher language analytic ability are prone to achieve more gains when provided with pre-task ME in L2 writing.The conclusions provide empirical evidence to support the theory of skill acquisition,transfer-appropriate processing and information processing model,and further prove the efficacy of explicit instruction.Consequently,language teachers should be encouraged to provide such explicit instruction before or after English writing tasks,especially the use of pre-task ME targeting the past counterfactual conditional in L2 writing.