Effect Of The Continuation Task On The Structure,Content,and Language In Argumentative Writing

The current study researched the effect of the continuation task on argumentative writing,which is an increasingly prevalent approach in second language(L2)writing.In this task,‘learners are first provided with a text that consists of a story with its ending removed.They are then required to read the text of the incomplete story and finish it through writing in the most coherent and logical way possible'(Wang and Wang 2015:5).This task highlights ‘learn together,use together'(Wang,2009)principle,during which L2 learners interact and align with the original text continuously,and their written production can be improved.In academic writing,there are four basic text genres: narration,description,exposition and argumentation.Among them,argumentation has been regarded as the most challenging one in that it is a combination of skills required in the other three text genres,and one extra challenging ability is demanded,namely critical thinking.Due to argumentation's irreplaceable role in cultivating learners' critical thinking,many countries emphasize the teaching of argumentation,and the importance of argumentation is also reflected in large scale examinations such as GRE,TOFEL.However,the result of teaching is hardly satisfactory.As for Chinese students,the situation can be worse: they dread argumentative writing and their writing frequently fail in viewpoints,support and structure.Not only the students,many English teachers in China find argumentation challenging and students sometimes fail to acquire the expected skill.As a result,how to improve L2 learners' argumentative writing and how to promote argumentation teaching efficiency are worthy to be discussed.Although a number of studies have proved that the continuation task is effective in enhancing English writing,none have ever investigated its effect on argumentation,which makes this study stand out.The current study lasted for 4 weeks with a pretest-treatment-posttest research design,during which two classes of 20 Chinese students constituted a continuation task group and a topic writing group.Students in the continuation task group read an incomplete argumentation with introduction,thesis statement,the first and second supporting paragraphs given,and then continued the third supporting paragraph and conclusion.In the meanwhile,the topic writing group wrote a complete argumentation of the same topic.This study adopted the guidance from Oshima & Hogue(2006)on argumentative writing and set the rating criteria in terms of structure,content and language.40 students' argumentative writings and continuations were rated and the lexical and syntactic complexity were calculated.The evaluations of the argumentative writing were as follows:1)In structure part,scores were given as per whether there were topic sentences,supporting sentences and final conclusion.2)In content part,scores were given in congruent with the completeness,generality and rationality of topic sentences and whether appropriate statistics,data or quotations were used in supporting sentences.3)In language part,the coherence and grammar mistakes per hundred words were scored.4)The average numbers of lexical and syntactic complexity in pretest and posttest were calculated via corpus analysis software.The results showed that firstly,the continuation task was superior to the topic writing task in promoting the structure in argumentative writing.No significant difference existed in the pretest between the two groups,while significant difference was found in the posttest,with the continuation task group outperforming the topic writing group.Moreover,both groups had an increase in mean scores from pretest to posttest,but the increase was not significant.Secondly,the continuation task was superior to the topic writing task in improving the content in argumentative writing.No significant difference existed in the pretest,but in the posttest,the scores of the continuation task group were significantly higher than those of the topic writing group.In addition,both groups showed significant gains from pretest to posttest.Thirdly,the continuation task had the same effect as the topic writing task in facilitating the language in argumentative writing,but the enhancement was not significant.No significant difference was found between the two groups in the pretest or in the posttest,but both groups increased in mean scores,though the increase was not significant.To conclude,this study has testified that the continuation task has positive effect on argumentative writing,especially in structure and content.It also provides support for the question raised by Wang and Wang(2015)on the efficiency of the continuation task in different text genres,and verifies that the continuation task is conducive to argumentative writing as well.