Effects Of Language Proficiency On Learners’ Alignment In The Reading-Speaking Integrated Task

The extension theory is based on the idea of Interactive Alignment Model.Alignment is the natural property and internal mechanism of interaction.The mechanism of interaction to promote learning is actually alignment effect.Without alignment,there is no learning effect.Once the extension theory is proposed,it has attracted the attention of scholars and researchers.But the researches on continuation task are still limited to written output and alignment in vocabulary,phrase and grammatical structure.Spoken production and its alignment have not received adequate attention from scholars and researchers.The study intends to introduce the reading-speaking integrated task into the study of the extension theory and explore the alignment in a reading-speaking integrated task.Based on this,it explores the effects of language proficiency on learners’ output and alignment.The subjects are 40 sophomores coming from two non-English major classes in a university in Hebei Province.According to the pre-test grades,they are divided into the equivalent language proficiency groups and the different language proficiency groups.They read the uncompleted story alone and then talk with their partners to complete the ending.The results show that in a reading-speaking integrated task,there is no significant difference in word output per minute between the two groups.But the subjects in the different language proficiency groups are better in terms of language accuracy,the number of alignment in vocabulary and phrases than those in equivalent language proficiency groups.This study could provide guidance for group division of peer interaction and broaden the research perspective of the extension.