An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of The Continuation Task On Junior High School Students' English Writing

Writing plays an essential role in second language teaching and learning.The development of writing ability represents the combination and coordination of language ability and critical thinking.However,in the English classroom of junior high school,some teachers neglect writing teaching and some students are afraid of writing,which results in students' low writing motivation and poor writing skills.Therefore,Professor Wang Chuming puts forward the the continuation task based on the theory of second language acquisition.The continuation task integrates the language imitation and contents creation through combing reading and writing tightly.In the continuation task,students are required to continue a story according to the source text with its ending removed,through which,students can improve their writing ability.This study attempts to explore the effects of the continuation task on junior high school students' writing ability and writing motivation through a teaching experiment and motivation questionnaires.It aims to find answers for the following two questions.(1)In what aspects can the continuation task improve junior high school students' English writing ability?(2)What are the effects of the continuation task on junior high school students' English writing motivation?The participants of this study are 82 students in Grade 8 from a junior high school in Tianhe district,Guangzhou.The experiment lasts for 14 weeks in English writing classes.The author applied the continuation task in the experimental group and product approach in the control group.The students in the experimental group wrote following text reading in six continuation tasks and the students in the control group wrote six given topics without text reading.In addition,the author investigated the students' writing motivation before and after the experiment.Analyzing data of writing tests and questionnaires with SPSS18.0,as well as the results of the interview,this study reveals that the continuation task is effective in improving students' writing ability and enhancing their writing motivation.Three major findings are as follows.Firstly,the continuation task can effectively improve students' writing ability in theaspects of content,grammar and structure.Secondly,the continuation task can effectively enhance students' writing motivation,especially on deep motivation and achieving motivation,while the effects on surface motivation is not obvious.Thirdly,students in the experimental group have positive attitude towards the continuation task.They think that the continuation task can stimulate their imagination and cultivate their critical thinking.From the results and discussion of this study,we can have the following pedagogical implications.First,teachers should combine reading teaching and writing teaching closely by making full use of textbooks and reading materials and also create effective and interesting writing tasks.Second,teachers should give positive feedback to students' writing and apply some interesting feedback activities to motivate students in writing.Third,teachers should encourage students to read English literature works to make them enjoy reading and design some effective writing assignments accordingly.