The Impact Of The Independent Writing Task And The Continuation Tasks On Test Takers' Writing Performance

The continuation task has grown in popularity and has been proved effective to facilitate L2 learning in recent years.As a new kind of task type,the continuation task has been used in high-stake tests in China,but only very limited empirical research has been done to test the validity and reliability of the continuation task.In an effort to investigate whether the continuation task is suitable for high stake tests,an empirical research is conducted in a foreign language university in China to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to comparing the writing performance(including score,linguistic features)of 30 test takers with different English proficiency and their feelings of the independent writing task with that of the continuation task to find out how English proficiency and task type influence test taker's performance.The major findings of the study are as follows:(1)Both task type and test takers'English proficiency have influence on test takers' scores.Test takers' have higher scores in the continuation task.The impact of students'English proficiency on scores is more significant in the independent task than the continuation task.(2)Both task type and test taker's English proficiency have an impact on the textual features.Essays of the continuation task have a higher level of lexical sophistication,syntactic complexity than the independent task on the whole.Compared with the independent writing task,the differences in textual features of students with different proficiency are reduced in the continuation task.(3)Differences exist in test takers' attitudes,attention and feelings when responding to different task types.This research hopes to provide empirical research data,suggestions for the application of the continuation task in language testing,and some implications for the future research.