A Case Study Into The Impacts Of Picture Continuation Tasks And Text Continuation Tasks On Linguistic Complexity

Based on the Continuation Theory,this study takes six freshmen from two classes of non-English majors in Dalian Maritime University as the participants to explore the different impacts of Picture Continuation Task(PCT)and Text Continuation Task(TCT)on linguistic complexity at the overall and individual levels by using the mixed method.In the 12-week study,two classes altermately completed the same Continuation Task(CT)with different input modes.One class completed the CT by reading picture books,and the other class completed the same one by reading texts only.Each participant completed four CTs of different topics:two PCTs and two TCTs.Altogether 24 writing samples were collected.This study investigates lexical and syntactic complexity quantitatively by using LCA and L2SCA,and explores the different impacts of different modes of CT on linguistic complexity.The results are as follows:At the overall level,14 out of 25 lexical complexity measures are comparatively higher in TCT,three measures are significantly higher in PCT,and the other eight measures show no difference.Of the 10 syntactic measures,one is higher in TCT,and the other nine measures are higher in PCT,five of which are significantly higher in PCT.At the individual level,the linguistic complexity of the six participants in both PCT and TCT is not the same.Through the quantitative analysis,interviews and writing samples,it can be found that,affected by the pictures in PCT,the participants are more willing to express themselves by using more diverse words and more complex syntactic structures.In contrast,lexical density and sophistication are higher in TCT,because the participants tend to use simple sentence structures to avoid grammatical mistakes.Theoretically,this study further confirms the alignment effects in CT,provides empirical data for the research on different input modes of CT,and offers a new perspective of CT study.Pedagogieally,this research has some values in teaching English writing.Teachers can choose different input modes of CT to improve students1 English writing proficiency based on their teaching purposes.Teachers can use PCT to improve the syntactic complexity,and use TCT to improve the lexical complexity of students' writings.