A Study Of The Effect Of The Continuation Task On Chinese EFL Learners' Article Use Under The Theory Of Extension

Differences in article use between Chinese and English make it difficult for Chinese learners to learn English articles.Therefore,it is worth exploring how to solve this problem for us.The continuation task is considered as one of the most effective methods in improving the study of a foreign language(Wang,2015).In the field of SLA,a large quantity of studies related to the effect of the continuation task on learning a foreign language has been reported.But very few studies have been conducted to study its effect on Chinese EFL learners' article use.According to the theory of extension put forward by professor Wang,the main goal of the current study is to explore what features of article use are shown by Chinese EFL learners in the continuation task,compared with those in the reading task and the topic writing task.In addition,it aims to explore what changes are presented in the Chinese EFL learners' article use after three rounds of the continuation task.Two research questions are answered in this study:1)What features of article use are shown by the Chinese EFL learners in the continuation task compared with those in the reading task and the topic writing task?2)How different types of errors variate in the Chinese EFL learners' article use after three rounds of the continuation task?In order to answer the two questions,an empirical study was conducted.67 subjects were randomly divided into three groups.Group A was assigned to do the continuation task,group B to do the reading task and group C to do the topic writing task.The whole study lasted 6 weeks.In the first week,the pretest was performed.In the second to fourth weeks,each group of subjects completed their own tasks separately.After the last task was finished,the immediate post-test was performed.In the sixth week,the delayed posttest and an interview were conducted.The statistical data collected from the three error correction tests were analyzed by SPSS 17.0,and information got from the interview was used for qualitative analysis.The results are that 1)compared with the other two groups,significant improvement was shown in the learners' article use in the continuation task.2)In the continuation task group,learners' indefinite article use was improved significantly,while their definite article use was still unstable;3)and as to different types of errors in article use,the misuse and leakage of the indefinite article were declined significantly,while the redundancy of the indefinite article and the three types of errors,namely,the misuse,leakage and redundancy of the definite article did not show significance.