A Study On The Effect Of Continuation Task On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Self-Efficacy And Writing Achievement

In 2016,Continuation Task became a new type of writing in the College Entrance Examination in Zhejiang province,which attracted the attention of many high school educators.Continuation Task differs from traditional writing in that it combines reading and writing,language input and output.Continuation Task first provides learners with a narrative reading material.After reading,learners are required to write the end or the following part of the story based on the material.It can stimulate learners’ imagination and writing interest.However,the fact is that English writing teaching in senior high schools is often ignored,and students are not interested in writing.Many students have the tendency to avoid writing.Based on this,this study attempts to explore the influence of this new writing style on senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy and writing achievement.Based on the theories of input hypothesis,output hypothesis and interactive alignment,this study attempts to explore three research questions:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy?(2)Can Continuation Task enhance senior high school students’ English writing selfefficacy? If it can,whether the effect on English writing skill self-efficacy and English writing task self-efficacy is the same?(3)Can Continuation Task improve senior high school students’ English writing achievement? If it can,whether the effect is same to students with different levels of English writing?The participants in this study were 96 high school students(48 in the controlled class and 48 in the experimental class)from the school the author worked for.The experiment lasted for 14 weeks.Before and after the experiment,the author used questionnaire from Tang Fang and Xu Jinfen(2011)to measure the English writing self-efficacy of the participants.During the experiment,the experimental class used Continuation Task method to teach English writing,while the controlled class used topic writing method to teach English writing.After the experiment,the researcher combined qualitative analysis(interview)and quantitative analysis,and used SPSS to make statistical analysis of the experimental results and discussed the research questions.The research found that(1)Senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy was at a medium level,and students’ English writing task self-efficacy was higher than English writing skill self-efficacy;(2)Continuation Task can enhance the writing self-efficacy of senior high school students.Moreover,Continuation Task played a greater role in improving English writing skill self-efficacy.In the post-test,the score of writing skill self-efficacy surpassed that of English writing task self-efficacy,and there was a significant difference between the two.(3)Continuation Task can improve the English writing achievement of senior high school students,but it had little effect on the writing achievement of students with high-level writing but had a significant effect on the improvement of English writing achievement of middle-level and low-level students.The teaching implications of this study are as follows: First,cultivate students’ interest in English writing and enhance their self-efficacy in English writing.Interest is the best teacher,and interest will also make students invest more time and energy in the learning process;secondly,increase students’ vocabulary and their knowledge of grammar,from interviews and questionnaires,it is mainly the use of vocabulary and grammar that makes students worry about English writing,so more attention should be paid in this aspect;thirdly,English writing teaching should combine input and output,and students cannot effectively give output without enough input.Of course,there are still some limitations in this study,further and more comprehensive research is needed in the future.