A Study Of The Effects Of The Continuation Task On Junior High School Students' English Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary acquisition is an important component of the second language learning,which should not be neglected.It should be noted that lexical knowledge could help learners improve their language abilities.The effective vocabulary learning method deserves much attention.According to the existent studies,the continuation task is conducive to language learning by bridging the gap between comprehension and production.However,most studies concerning the continuation task concentrate on its effects on the reading,writing or grammar learning.Studies related to the effects of the continuation task on vocabulary acquisition are not sufficient,which should deserve much attention.Based on the Interactive Alignment Theory and the Input Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis,the present study tries to explore the effectiveness of the continuation task on English vocabulary learning for junior high school students by comparing it with the summary task and the reading-only task.The research questions are as follows:1.What are the effects of the continuation task on English vocabulary learning for junior high school students?2.Which aspect of English vocabulary learning does the continuation task contribute to,form,meaning or usage for junior high school students?3.What different effects do the continuation task,the summary task and the reading-only task have on English vocabulary learning for junior high school students?The subjects of the present study are 90 students of the eighth grade from three parallel classes in A school in Shenzhen,Guangdong Province.The three classes are randomly assigned as three groups:a continuation group,a summary group and a reading-only group.In the continuation group,participants read a reading passage with its ending removed and are required to use the target words to complete it with imagination.As for students in the summary group,they read the same passage and write a short summary of the whole passage with the target words.Students in the reading-only group read the same passage containing the target words without performing writing tasks.There are nine target words selected from the pilot study,including 3 verbs,3 nouns and 3 adjectives in the passage.After finishing the writing tasks,all the participants would receive the immediate vocabulary test containing a fill-in test and the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale unexpectedly to explore the effects of different tasks on the form,meaning and usage of the target words.One week later,three groups would receive a delayed vocabulary test to reveal the effects of different tasks on vocabulary retention.The two vocabulary posttests had the same testing content.Besides,an interview would be conducted to collect qualitative data concerning the effects of the continuation task on vocabulary learning.One-way ANOVA,the following post hoc Scheffe and the Paired-samples t-test would be used to analyze the data of words' form,meaning and usage in two vocabulary posttests.An interview would be used to collect the qualitative data.The results above demonstrated that the continuation task was an effective method of English vocabulary acquisition for junior high school students and could improve their interest in learning English.Besides,subjects in three groups could acquire the vocabulary in terms of form,meaning and usage to some extent.Compared with words' form,the continuation task had better learning effects on vocabulary acquisition in terms of meaning and usage.The summary group did not perform as well as the continuation group when compared with the reading-only group in these two aspects.In general,the continuation group gained the best performance,followed by the summary group and the reading-only group.The effects of the continuation task on language learning should deserve our attention.