A Case Study Of Alignment In Senior High School Students’ English Continuation Task

The continuation task,which combines reading with writing,has nowadays aroused considerable interest and a line of research has been conducted to confirm its effectiveness in facilitating L2 learning.Theoretically,a renowned Chinese L2 scholar Wang Chuming proposes the xu-argument,arguing that via xu or CEC(completion,extension and creation),language is learned and high efficiency is also achieved.The xu-argument elucidates the underlying facilitative effect of the continuation task,namely the alignment,a complex means by which human beings effect coordinated interaction and maintain that interaction in dynamically adaptive ways.Nonetheless,most of the existing literature chose college students or English majors as research subjects while research on senior high school students still remains in paucity.And more importantly,in excess of 10 provinces in China have now included the continuation task in college entrance examinations.Therefore,in order to obtain a good backwash effect and better exploit the advantages of this task,it is of great necessity to explore how senior high school students complete the continuation task and whether alignment occurs in the writing process.In light of the aforementioned concerns,the present case study aims to address the following two questions:1)Do senior high school students align with the input text in language in the continuation task of L2-English writing?If yes,how is the alignment reflected in the writing process?2)Do senior high school students align with the input text in content in the continuation task of L2-English writing?If yes,how is the alignment reflected in the writing process?Two senior high school students of Grade 3 in a province of eastern China participated in the research,who first read and continued an incomplete writing via think-aloud before taking part in a retrospect interview.The findings revealed that both of the two participants,MJM and GL,aligned with the input text of the continuation task in language,which specifically,was demonstrated at lexical,phrasal and clausal levels.Meanwhile,the situation models constructed in their continuations were cohered with that in the input text,which means the two participants also aligned with the input text in content.What’s more,in the process of completing this continuation task,rereading was found to be the most primary way through which the two participants interacted with the input text.The findings have testified to the effectiveness of the continuation task in facilitating L2 learning and use as well as shedding light on the pedagogy of English as a second language:i)integrated English teaching combining reading and writing skills is recommendable in senior high school English teaching;ii)students should be guided to pay attention to situation models when reading,which are of great importance in engendering successful communication;iii)for the institutions involved in the development of materials,it is vitally significant to consider the design of textbooks and exercises to be consistent with the principle of "learn together,use together".