The Effects Of Pre-task Planning On Senior High School Students' English Writing Performance

English is an important part of senior high school curriculum,and it is also difficult for students to learn.Writing,as an important part of improving students' English language skills,is one of the key contents of English courses and one of the basic English teachings.In the process of writing,planning is an important factor that influences second language learners' writing.Task-based second language acquisition studies have found that planning will affect the fluency,accuracy and complexity of language production,which further affects the quality of the written articles.This study explores the effects of pre-task planning on senior high school students' English writing performance under time restraints.Based on Kellogg's model of writing processes,limited information processing theory and Skehan's cognitive model,three questions will be addressed:(1)What effects does pre-task planning have on the fluency of senior high school students' English writing?(2)What effects does pre-task planning have on the accuracy of senior high school students' English writing?(3)What effects does pre-task planning have on the complexity of senior high school students' English writing?90 participants were chosen from two parallel classes of senior two in Mengba senior high school of Zhenyuan County,Qingyang City,Gansu Province.They were divided into two groups,namely,pre-task planning group and no(pre-task)planning group.The pre-task planning group was the experimental group and no planning group was the control group.Pre-task planning here means that learners have a certain time to plan for their production before performing the main task,while no planning means that learners are deprived of the time for planning the task in advance.The experiment lasted for sixteen weeks.There are mainly four stages in the whole experiment,namely,pilot study,pre-test,treatment and post-test.A pilot study was conducted to ensure the feasibility of the experimental design ofand the measuring methods,as well as the length of writing time.In order to avoid the repeated measuring effects,all the participants in the pilot study didn't participate in the experiment.A pre-test was administered to make sure whether the participants involved in the experiment were at the same level in writing fluency,accuracy and complexity.The results show that two groups were homogeneous in English writing proficiency.On this basis,the subjects who participated in the treatment were determined.After fourteen weeks of treatment,a post-test was conducted.The two groups completed the English writing task equivalent to the difficulty of college entrance examination under the pre-task planning condition and no planning condition respectively.The fluency,accuracy and complexity of two groups' compositions were calculated by four raters.The obtained data were analyzed with the aid of SPSS 23.0.The results show that planning does have significant impact on the quantity and quality of L2 writing.Pre-task planning results in greater fluency and complexity but does not affect accuracy significantly.The study shed light on Senior English writing teaching and learning.Teachers should make students realize the importance of planning in writing.They can set different time and planning conditions for completing writing tasks to cultivate students' writing fluency,accuracy and complexity,and finally improve students' English writing proficiency.For students,they can choose the planning conditions according to their second language level to write higher-quality compositions in writing training or in the examination.