The Effect Of Writing Task Prompts On Examinees’ Writing Performance In High School Entrance Examination

The ultimate goal of learning English is to communicate in English. At present, writing tasks are the only test item adopted in large-scale English tests to assess the writing ability of examinees, In recent years, the writing tasks of the High School Entrance Examination are prompted by pictures or by key words. But little attention has been paid to the problem that whether these two kinds of writing task prompt can test students’ comprehensive ability of using the English language. Based on the cognitive load theory, this research investigates the effects of different writing task prompts on the examinees’ writing performance.In this study, the examinees’writing performance includes writing score, linguistic performance(fluency, accuracy)and the main contents.By way of getting the students to finish the writing task and the questionnaire, coding their writing samples, analyzing the experimental data with SPSS17.0, the results show that different task prompters don’t exert a significant effect on writing score, linguistic performance (fluency, accuracy) and the main contents, and the cognitive load caused by the students’ writing process under different task prompts fails to be significant, too.That is to say, English writing tasks of Senior High School Entrance Examination can effectively assess students’ writing ability, either prompted by pictures or key words, and the writing tasks are thus validated.