A Study Of The Effects Of The Continuation-task On English Writing Of Senior High School Students

The continuation-task,a new writing task of NEMT(2016)in Zhejiang,has attracted much attention of many high school educators.It requires students to read an incomplete story or passage first and then continue to write an end,which is different from practical writing and topic-given writing.At present,a few studies have been conducted mainly for students majoring in English at colleges and universities,but there is little research on continuation task applied in basic education,for the research at home and abroad is still in the initial stage.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the effects of this new method on English writing of the students in senior high schools.The study tries to probe into two research questions with the theoretical basis of Input Hypothesis,Out Hypothesis and Alignment-effect : 1.What effects does the continuation task have on the writing attitude of the senior high school students? 2.What effects does the continuation task have on the writing performance of the senior high school students? 80 students(CC=40,EC=40)of senior 2 are randomly selected from the school where the researcher is working to conduct a 16-week empirical study.During the experiment,the experimental class is taught with the continuation task method and the control class is taught with the traditional method(propositional writing).After the experiment,the researcher combines qualitative analysis(questionnaires,interviews)with quantitative analysis(writing tests),using SPSS 22.0 software to make statistical analysis on the experimental results and discusses the research questions.The study finds that the continuation task has a great impact on the students' writing attitude,for the students have become more positive in cognition,emotion,and behavioral tendencies.Moreover,the continuation task also has the advantage of promoting language learning for senior high school students,which can improve the writing performance to a certain extent,and its effect is better than that of the traditional writing method in improving the learners' writing performance,for the grammatical errors are significantly decreased and the content is longer and richer.The Paired-Sample T-test shows there is no significant difference in control class(P=0.140 >0.05),but there is significant difference in experimental class(P=0.003 < 0.05).The research results show that compared with traditional writing,the continuation task method is more conducive to improving senior high school students' writing attitude and writing performance.