The Effect Of Peer Interaction On Writing Quality In A Continuation Task For Middle School Students

With its positive effect on language learning confirmed by many studies,the continuation task is gaining increasing attention,but it has certain limitations per se,like the unidirectional interaction between the text and learner.To enhance the intensity of interaction in a continuation task,Wang(2015)suggested introducing interpersonal interaction into the continuation task.However,empirical studies in this regard are still in its infancy.This study integrates peer interaction into the continuation task,with the aim to explore how the peer interaction between middle school students of different language proficiency levels(i.e.low-medium;low-high;medium-high)in a continuation task affects the alignment effect and writing quality of their writings.The research questions of this study are: 1.What effect does the peer interaction between students of different language proficiency levels(i.e.low-medium;low-high;medium-high)have on alignment in a continuation task? 2.What effect does the peer interaction between students of different language proficiency levels have on writing quality in a continuation task? 3.How does the interaction between students of different language proficiency levels affect alignment and writing quality in a continuation task?The participants of this study were forty-eight eighth grade students from two key classes.They were grouped into eight Low-Medium pairs,eight Low-High pairs,and eight Medium-High pairs according to their English proficiency levels.They received a twelve-week treatment and their performance at the last continuation task was the source of data analysis of this study.Firstly,the participants were required to read an incomplete story and write a continuation within forty minutes.Then they were asked to conduct a twenty-minute interaction with their partners.After the interaction session,they revised their writings individually.Lastly,six randomly-selected pairs received a fifteen-minute interview.The data collected in this study included the participants' first and second writings and the recordings of their interaction and interview.The major findings are listed as follows: Peer interaction embedded in a continuation task enhanced alignment effect in participants' writings at three linguistic levels,especially at the lexical level;Peer interaction embedded in a continuation task improved the writing quality of participants' writings,and it had similar positive effect on accuracy,complexity,coherence,and content richness;The Low-Mediumpairs showed the most significant improvement in linguistic alignment and writing scores,followed by the Medium-High pairs,and then the Low-High pairs.This study also identified the decisive factors that contributed to the enhancement of alignment and writing quality—Comprehension and Construction.They share a similar mechanism—they facilitated participants' construction of aligned situation models and thus triggered subsequent linguistic alignment.There was a particular process embedded in the process of Comprehension and Construction—Salient Items Noticing.The enhanced “attention” or “noticing” of salient language items during the peer interaction could lead to the retrieval and reuse of certain linguistic items.In addition,Evaluation and Suggestion also contributed to the intensified alignment and improved writing quality to certain extent,though the capability of suggestion giving was in need of improvement for the low-and medium-proficiency-level participants in this study.The major pedagogical implication of this study is that teachers can adopt a continuation task combined with learner-learner interaction and learner-text interaction in daily teaching practice to facilitate students' writing instruction.Meanwhile,teachers need to pay attention to the gap between the learners' proficiency levels.Pairs with a moderate gap of proficiency levels in between may perform better that those with a wider gap of language proficiency levels.