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

English writing is the process that learners use the language to express their thoughts.As one of the four basic skills,writing can not only examine English learners' comprehensible ability in using vocabulary,grammar and discourse,but also reflect their thinking and expression competence.Over the past years,there are many scholars who devote to finding effective ways to enhance students' English writing ability.Professor Wang Chuming(2012)proposes the continuation task(CT)method,which combines reading and writing by completing the unfinished texts.According to Wang(2012),CT is an effective way to enhance learners' foreign language learning efficiency.However,empirical researches on the influence of CT method on senior high school students' English writing are scant.Thus,the study attempts to apply CT method to senior high school students' English writing process in order to find out the effects of the method on their writing performance.The study discusses the effects of CT method on senior high school students' English writing in terms of writing achievements,writing motivation and writing attitudes.The research mainly answers the following questions:(1)What the effect is CT on senior high school students' English writing performance?(2)What the effect is CT on senior high school students' English writing motivation? What is the correlation between students' English writing motivation and their post-test scores in experimental class(EC)?(3)What are senior high school students' attitudes towards CT?The subjects of the research are the students of two parallel classes in Xiangyang Senior High school in Linfen,Shanxi Province.The two classes are randomly chosen as controlled class(CC)and EC.Before the experiment,the same English writing motivation questionnaire and writing test were handed out to the two classes in order to investigate students' English writing motivation and their English writing performance.During the experiment,the students of EC were taught by the method of CT while students in CC were taught by product method.At the last week of the experiment,the researcher required all the participants to finish the post-questionnaire and writing test to investigate their changes in English writing motivation and writing performance.At the same time,the researcher did a survey to all thestudents in EC and made an interview to six students in order to know their attitudes towards CT method.The data collection is divided into three parts.One is the results of the students' English writing tests,in which the researcher can know about their changes in the process of the experiment.The second is the pre and post English writing motivation questionnaires which are used to observe their changes in English writing motivation.The third is the results of the supplementary questionnaire and the interview to EC,whose aims are to know about students' attitudes towards CT method.Major findings of the study can be summarized as follows: Firstly,CT method has a significant effect on improving learners' English writing performance.The mean of EC in two tests rises from 8.3947 to 11.9868,and P-value is.000.Secondly,CT method has significant effects on enhancing learners' English writing motivation.The mean of EC rises from 2.1469 to 3.0398,and P-value is.002.Thirdly,CT method can arouse learners' interest and confidence in learning English.The results of the experiment show that: CT method is an effective learning method,which can not only improve learners' English writing performance,but also enhance learners' English writing motivation and interest.