An Empirical Study On Effects Of Worked-Examples' Presentation Form On English Writing

As one of the most important component of English learning,writing represents the comprehensive capacities of English learners,which is an indispensable skill to master.Many studies have been devoted on English writing research from the different perspectives,and the field is fruitful today.Learners' written production competence,however,needs further improvement.Cognitive Load Theory(CLT),proposed by Sweller in the 1980 s,is a learning theory which has its foundations in Limited Resource Theory and Schema Theory.It is suggested that learning could be optimized when it is aligned with human cognitive resource architecture.The cognitive resource architecture contains limited working memory and unlimited long-term memory.Schema construction and automation could overcome the limitation of working memory capacity and reduce the cognitive load on working memory so that learning and problem-solving occurs easily.Worked-example effect is one of the important instructional design principles derived from cognitive load theory.According to Sweller(2006),worked-examples are efficient for acquisition and automation of schemas and reducing the cognitive load in working memory,thus promoting the independent learning and effective transfer.In recent years,researchers begin to draw attention to language instruction from the perspective of cognitive load.However,there are few studies conducted on worked-example effect on learners' writing performance from the perspective of cognitive load theory.Therefore,the present study,based on the cognitive load theory,tries to explore the effects of different worked-examples' presentation on learners' English writing performance.The participants of the study are 147 sophomores from Shanxi Normal University.There are three groups.One is the control group.The participants are required to complete writing tasks without presenting any reading samples.The other two are the experiment groups.Before finishing the same writing task,the participants in the two groups are offered to read a relevant reading sample: a complete worked-example and an incomplete worked-example(the deleted part is needed to complete).After the participants finish the writing task,they are required to complete the Writing Cognitive Load Scale(WCLS).All the participants are involved in the pre-test,the experimental training and the post-test.After the13-week treatment,the data are collected and analyzed through SPSS17.0.The participants' written performance in terms of organization,content,language and three linguistic measures:fluency,complexity and accuracy as well as their cognitive load from the WCLS are analyzed.The major findings from the study are as follows:(1)Participants offered worked-examples before writing task make more progress in writing performance than those with no worked-examples in the aspect of organization,content,language.Further analysis of the linguistic measures reveals that worked-examples exert significant effects on fluency and complexity.However,only those offered incomplete worked-examples make more progress than those with no worked-examples in terms of accuracy.No significant difference exists in accuracy when offered complete worked-examples.The result of the WCLS suggests that participants provided with worked-examples undergo lower cognitive load than those without any worked-examples.(2)Participants provided with incomplete worked-examples before writing task make more progress in writing performance than those provided with complete worked-examples in terms of organization,content,language.Further analysis of linguistic measures demonstrates that incomplete worked-examples assist greater linguistic complexity and accuracy.But no significant difference exists in fluency.The result of the WCLS reveals that participants provided with incomplete worked-examples undergo more decrease of cognitive load than those provided with complete worked-examples.In conclusion,the present study yields more empirical support for the worked-example effect and demonstrates that worked-examples can indeed decrease learners' total cognitive load and have a significant influence on learners' writing performance.In actual writing classroom,instructors can flexibly design and provide proper worked-examples before writing according to the situation of students and materials so as to increase learners' writing efficiency.