| Writing is one of the basic skills of using language.In the face of the establishment of new curriculum standards and the reform of English writing test in National College Entrance Examination,students are generally anxious and eager to improve writing proficiency in order to find effective ways to deal with the new type of writing test: reading-writing integrated continuation.Based on the combination of input-output theory and interactive alignment theory,the continuation task,put forward by Professor Wang Chuming(2012),is an effective way to promote English writing.It is easy to conduct this task.By erasing the end of an English reading material with moderate length,interesting content and suitable for students' English level,students are required to creatively complete the end on the basis of fully reading the original text.To address the issue of unsatisfactory interactive alignment effect and enhance the intensity of interaction between students and the reading text,Professor Wang Chuming(2018)proposed one of variants of the continuation task,namely iterative continuation,which consists of two-rounds continuation and novel continuation.This thesis adopts the latter,dividing a surprising and interesting novel into six sections.The first section serves for understanding the background of the novel and such writing task.After reading that,students start to write from the second section,then compare with the original text and move to write the following part,until to the end.Compared with the continuation task,iterative continuation involves several interrelated tasks,which is in line with the rules students learning in school.Compared with the summative assessment of continuation task,iterative continuation not only implements formative assessment,but also provides excellent reference templates.In the cycle of practice and consolidation,writing proficiency improves accordingly.In addition,the following tasks vary with the changes of writing ability,which can instantly inspire learning interests and strengthen promoting effect.However,compared with many supportive evidences of continuation task,iterative continuation needs more experimental studies to prove its significance on writing teaching.Under the circumstance of the constant rigidity of exam-oriented teaching in the writingclass and the reform of English writing test in National College Entrance Examination,imperative investigations are needed to study how to relieve writing anxiety and improve writing proficiency,especially for the students who are in their last but one year to take part in the College Entrance Examination.Therefore,the present study takes the initiative to explore the influence of iterative continuation on senior high school students' writing anxiety and writing proficiency.The following two research questions are discussed in detail:(1)What is the effect of iterative continuation on writing anxiety(somatic anxiety,cognitive anxiety and avoidance behavior)? How does it affect?(2)What is the effect of iterative continuation on writing ability(content,organization,vocabulary and language use)? How does it affect?This thesis is an experimental study.The subjects are from two parallel classes in senior 2of one middle school in Shijiazhuang,Hebei Province.Before the experiment,the questionnaires of Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory(Cheng,2004)and the 2017 English writing tests in National College Entrance Examination were distributed to students to investigate the level of English writing anxiety and writing ability.In the pre-test,the results of independent sample t-test indicated that the two classes have roughly the same level of writing anxiety and writing ability.And they were randomly assigned to experimental class and control class.During the three-month experiment,the experimental class conducted continuation writing every two weeks,while the control class adopted the traditional translating-imitating writing model.After the experiment,the same questionnaires and the2018 English writing tests in National College Entrance Examination were issued again to measure the degree of writing anxiety and writing ability that students have achieved after the training,so as to reveal the impact of iterative continuation on writing anxiety and writing ability.After 12 weeks of experiment,the data were analyzed by SPSS 19.0 and the following findings were concluded:(1)Compared with the traditional translating-imitating writing,iterative continuation can effectively relieve students' writing anxiety,especially students' somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety.(2)Compared with the traditional translating-imitating writing,iterative continuation is helpful to improve writing ability to some extent but the promoting effect is not significant.Specifically,the effect on the acquisition of vocabularyand language use is better than the other,but the learning of content and organization is not remarkable.The implications of this research for teaching are as follows:(1)The selected reading materials should be about 350 words in length,with moderate difficulty in language and interesting content.In addition,the length and difficulty of text can be adjusted according to students' English level.The text is better to be narration with vivid plots,strong logic and extensive content,which can leave room for students to imagine and think.(2)Teachers should play a good guiding role in the process of continuation task.When reading,teachers help students grasp the logic of the article,sort out the information and accumulate materials for further writing.When writing,teachers remind students to organize the content,especially to keep in line with the style of the original text,and to make good connection with the first sentences of the two given paragraphs.(3)A variety of methods can be used to force students to read back the original text repeatedly and enhance interaction with it.On the basis of the deep understanding on the original text and enhancing the alignment with it,the combination of content creation and language imitation can improve language acquisition. |
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