The Effects Of Individual And Collaborative Planning On Chinese Efl Learners’ Alignment And Writing Performance In The Continuation Task

Task planning has been proved by massive research as a valuable factor in facilitating L2 learning.Whether in pre-task planning or in while-task planning,L2 learners can benefit from its advantage in easing the cognitive burden and thus achieve a better language performance.Despite a large body of research on the task planning,none has explored its role in the continuation task.Continuation task,a brand-new activity with a combination of reading and writing,was believed to be able to help resolve the dilemma of second language teaching in China.The continuation task symbolizes an organic integration of language input and output and its facilitative role in SLA has been evidenced by manifold studies.However,a research on cooperative‘task planning’ prior to the continuation task is still lacking.With a focus on the impact of pre-writing planning conditions on the individual writing,the current research attempts to compare whether different participatory structures in planning(individual planning vs.collaborative planning)would affect learners’ writing performance and alignment magnitude in the continuation task.The whole study centers on the following three questions:(1)What are the effects of individual versus collaborative planning on the EFL learners’ writing performance(complexity,accuracy,fluency)in the continuation task?(2)What are the effects of individual versus collaborative planning on the alignment in the continuation task?(3)Are there any correlations between EFL learners’ writing performance and alignment under individual versus collaborative planning conditions in the continuation task?To find answers to the above three questions,an empirical study was designed with planning conditions as its independent variable,and writing performance(CAF)and alignment as the dependent variables.Sixty-one participants in the study were all from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies,sophomores and juniors majoring in English.They have once received a short-term continuation-relevant training before in the English writing course.Primarily chosen from three parallel classes,these participants were divided into two groups(individual planning group and collaborative planning group)composed of 30 and 31 people respectively.The whole experiment lasted 77 to79 minutes: 9 minutes for reading,10 minutes for planning,50 minutes for continuing the story and 8 to 10 minutes for filling in the questionnaire.During the planning session,participants from the individual group worked alone based on specific instructions and those from the collaborative group cooperated to negotiate and predict the subsequent story plot.All participants needed to finish the writing alone without communicating with others.To tap into how exactly the planning affects the performance,the discussion in the collaborative group was voice-recorded.In the end,the participants were required to complete a questionnaire.With a reference to the questionnaire,20 focal participants(10 from each group)were picked out to conduct a semi-structured interview from which more detailed information as qualitative data was used to support the quantitative result.L2 syntactic complexity analyzer and Ant Conc 3.4.4w were employed to measure target factors.All data were finally analyzed through SPSS 25.0.The principal findings are:(1)When planning on their own,learners were prone to produce writings characterized by significantly more complex lexis and syntax,specifically reflected in the greater numbers of lexical sophistication,type token ratio and dependent clauses per clause.But two groups revealed no significant differences in accuracy and fluency.(2)No matter performed in the solitary or collaborative form,planning conditions exerted no significant impact on learners’ linguistic alignment in their compositions.(3)Significantly negative correlations emerged between alignment and writing performance including complexity and fluency whereas significantly positive correlations appeared between alignment and accuracy.However,when taken as a whole,the data showed no significant relationship between alignment and fluency.These results indicated that the collaborative planning group embedded with interpersonal interactions did not gain obvious edges over the individual planning group even though the former fared better in accuracy.Furthermore,planning conditions made no noticeable influence on the number or the magnitude of aligned language expressions in students’ writings.Lastly,the alignment was not proportionate to higher CAF.That is,stronger alignment does not necessarily signify more sophisticated vocabulary,complicated sentences and longer texts.These findings partially confirmed Skehan’s trade-off hypothesis and corroborated the positive role played by interpersonal interaction and strategic planning in the continuation task.This study should,therefore,be of value to practitioners who wish to scientifically design and apply continuation tasks to the L2 class.