The Effect Of Continuation Task On English Writing Abilities In A Senior High School

Professor Wang Chuming(2012)advocated "continuation-task" method in writing,combining reading and writing.This method helps to inspire the imagination and cultivate innovative thinking skills,and combines comprehension and production tightly,it is an effective and efficient way to improve English writing.In recent years,continuation-task has aroused the concern in the field of foreign language teaching,but the discussion focused mainly on the theoretical level,and the empirical investigation of its promoting learning effect is relatively scarce.For this reason,this study attempts to apply continuation-task writing in senior high school English writing class,and discuss the influence of "continuation-task" on students'English writing ability.The thesis is an empirical study based on a review of previous research on "continuation-task".It is designed to answer the following questions:1):can "continuation-task" improve students,writing ability?2):can"continuation-task" improve students' fluency,complexity and accuracy of L2 narrative writing?3):is "continuation-task" helpful in changing the students' attitudes towards writing?The author experimented with selecting 60 senior high school students as participants from Qin'an County,Gansu Province.All participants were divided into two classes:one is experimental class(EC)with 30 students,another one is control class(CC)with 30 students,and two classes were general classes.On the basis of literature review,the author designed the experiment by integrating the advantages of continuation-task home and taking into consideration of the characteristics of senior high school students.The study lasted for 8 weeks,and adopted "pre-test"-exercise-"post-test" procedure.The process of the experiment was divided into three periods:the first period is the preparation for the experiment,including pre-test to both the two classes and pre-questionnaire towards the experiment class.The second period is the stage of eight-week's teaching experiment,the students in the control class were still writing according to the traditional proposition writing method,while the students in the experimental class were writing according to the continuation-task method,that is,with the English given first paragraph and the key words.After the experiment,the post-test was conducted in both the classes and the students in the experimental class were invited to do the post-questionnaire.Then,the researchers collected the writing of each class and calculated the fluency,accuracy and complexity of the language expressions based on the measurement criteria in the study of Yuan and Ellis(2003).Finally,the data were collected and analyzed through SPSS 21.0.Through data collection and analysis,the findings of the study are as follows:1)the continuation task is conducive to improve students' English writing ability.In addition,the students make significant progress in the accuracy and complexity of their writings,but the influences on writing fluency is not statistically significant.2)the continuation task also can enhance students' writing self-confidence and writing sense of accomplishment.