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An Experimental Study On The Effectiveness Of Cooperative Continuation Task Training On English Writing Anxiety In Senior High School

Posted on:2020-01-05Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J Y JiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2405330596471727Subject:Education
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As a significant part of English learning,the ability of writing is laid great emphasis by both students and teachers in senior high school.Writing anxiety,a negative factor for writing performances,is generated in the process of writing and widespread experienced by the learners in senior high school.Based on the literature,cooperative learning is a sort of creative teaching theory which originates from America in 1970 s and has been regarded as one of the most indispensable and effective teaching reforms in reducing the feelings of writing anxiety(Wu & Gu,2011;Guo,2014).In 2012,“Continuation Task” was put forward by Professor Wang who pointed out that such a kind of task is an effective method in making improvement of foreign language learning.This study starts from the introduction of different approaches in English writing and explains the notion of cooperative continuation task training in English writing classes,which is based on three theories: input hypothesis,output hypothesis and alignment.The cooperative learning is applied in the continuation task from the beginning to the end during the study period.Four students are assigned to work in one group to read and analyze an open-ended story together,and then every two of them are required to finish one continuation task.For testing the effectiveness of cooperative continuation task training,two aspects of factors are mainly observed including writing anxiety and writing performances.Based on this,the research questions are listed:(1)Would the cooperative continuation task training significantly reduce students' English writing anxiety in senior high school? If so,in what aspects?(2)Would the cooperative continuation training significantly improve students' writing competence?It took ten weeks to complete the entire research.36 students in the same class of grade three from the Senior High School Affiliated to Inner Mongolia University participated in the experiment.To make sure the existence of writing anxiety and well-understand the competence of English writing,the pretest was fulfilled in the beginning week.Based on Second Language Writing Apprehension Inventory,the result of a questionnaire verifies that students in senior high school experiences a high level of writing anxiety.The aim of the writing performances collection is to draw a comparison between the pretest and the posttest.The teaching process lasts totally eight weeks in which the 36 participants were instructed through the cooperative continuation task training.The last week was spared out for verifying the efficiency of the cooperative continuation task training by comparing the data from pre-test and post-test.All data collected in this research are analyzed and discussed by SPSS22,particularly including descriptive statistic and sample t-test.The major findings of this study are listed as follows:(1)The cooperative continuation task training based on the theories of alignment and inputoutput could reduce writing anxiety which commonly exists among the students in senior high school.More specific,the reduction has arrived at a significance level.The one that is influenced most by the teaching methods of cooperative continuation task training within the three dimensions is the cognitive anxiety.Moreover,the last one belongs to avoidance behavior.(2)Inspections of the changes of M in the aspect of English writing performances indicate that such a training can make an improvement in English writing competence of the students in senior high school.The result of paired sample t-test indicate that the promotion of English writing performance is of significance.Like many other experimental studies,some limitations exist in this study as well.The most obvious limitation in this research was the small sample size.The second limitation is whether the reading materials could be satisfied the requirements of all the participants.According to the results of the study,some suggestions are given.
Keywords/Search Tags:Cooperative continuation task training, writing anxiety, writing performance, teaching plan
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