The Effct Of The Continuation Task On Writing Selff-efficacy And Writing Performance

Writing self-efficacy refers to learners' own subjective recognition on their abilities to fulfill writing tasks.Efficacy beliefs affect people's recognition,motivations,affective processes and consequently their behavior.However,to date,no studies have endeavored to dig out the effectiveness of different writing tasks on writing self-efficacy.The continuation task,a specific writing-reading integrated task has been proved to be effective in facilitating language learning.But whether the facilitative effect of the continuation task on learning can bring ensuing effect on writing self-efficacy remains unknown.Therefore,the present study intends to explore(1)the effectiveness of the continuation task on the cultivation of writing self-efficacy and(2)the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing performance.The issues above were approached via an empirical study.A total of 49 sophomores from two natural classes participated in this study and they were randomly assigned as two groups: a continuation group and a control group.Learners in the continuation group were required to read an incomplete argumentative passage and then continue it while learners in the control group were asked to write an argumentative writing directly on the same topic without being exposed to any reading material.Research was conducted through five steps: 1)a writing self-efficacy questionnaire was handed out to get the participants' writing self-efficacy before treatment;2)participants were required to complete free writing tasks to probe into their writing performance before treatment;3)during eight-week treatment,participants in the continuation group completed three continuation tasks whereas participants in the control group completed three topic-writing tasks 4)post-writing self-efficacy questionnaire and free writing tasks were administered after eight-week treatment.5)thirteen participants were selected respectively from both the continuation task group and the control group to have a further semi-structured interview after treatment.The data obtained were processed through quantitative analysis supplemented with qualitative analysis.Wilcoxon signed-rank test,Mann-whitney U test,Pearson correlation test and a simple linear regression were used to analyze the data.Results of the study showed that learners in the continuation group achieved significant improvement in both writing performance and writing self-efficacy after treatment while the control group did not.However,the Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicated there was no significant difference in writing performance and writing self-efficacy between two groups in pretest and posttest.Additionally,results of the study were in accordance with the previous research(Woodrow,2011)that writing self-efficacy had a positive predictive power over writing performance.The present study has verified a theoretically motivated and empirically grounded way of cultivating writing self-efficacy.The useful scaffold provided by the input and the facilitative effect of the continuation task on learning triggered by the intensive interaction between comprehension and production mediate the cultivation.It suggests that writing self-efficacy,an important affective factor once hard to cultivate,could be enhanced by the continuation task,wherein learners construct the content based on the text they read and strive to imitate the useful expressions and language from the input text.