A Study On The Effects Of Number Of Participants On Language-Related Episodes In Collaborative Writing Task In Junior High School English Class

"Learning to cooperate" is an important way to promote learners’ self-development and sociality.The application of "learning to cooperate" in classroom teaching is conducive not only to the formation of learners’ sense of independence,but also to the development of their learning awareness and ability.As a task that integrates the concept of cooperation into classroom teaching,collaborative writing task helps to detect learners’ language learning and improve their writing skills.Besides,it can also facilitate learners’ language learning.However,in collaborative writing task,the language-related episodes produced during the interaction between learners will be affected by many factors,and further affecting the opportunities provided for their language learning.The number of participants is one of the important factors.When using collaborative writing task,teachers often select the participants and set up them randomly.Therefore,teachers should pay attention to the number of participants in order to maximize the opportunity of language learning for learners.Thus,this study mainly explores the effect of the number of participants,namely pair and group of four,on language-related episodes and aims to provide specific teaching suggestions for the practice of collaborative writing teaching for junior high school English teachers.Based on the Interaction Hypothesis,the Social Cultural Theory and Swain’s Output Hypothesis,this paper studies the effect of the number of participants,namely pair and group of four,on language-related episodes in junior high school English collaborative writing task.In this paper,four research methods,including educational experiment method,literature research method,discourse analysis method and testing method,are employed.And the researcher mainly uses research tools such as collaborative writing task,recording equipment,tailor-made post-test,table of LREs analysis standard,WPS and SPSS.The researcher took 54 students in Grade Nine in Shihezi No.M Middle School as the research subjects,including 18 in experimental group A(pair)and 36 in experimental group B(group of 4).This research mainly explores the following two questions: First,in junior high school English collaborative writing task,what effect does the number of participants have on the output of LREs? Four sub-questions are included,namely,what effect does the number of participants have on the frequency,type,results,and length of LREs? Secondly,in junior high school English collaborative writing task,what effect does the number of participants have on the retention of the resolved LREs? This question contains two sub-questions,namely,what effect does the number of participants have on the retention of correctly resolved and incorrectly resolved LREs?The findings are as follows: First,in junior high school English collaborative writing task,the number of participants has certain effects on the output of LREs.The effects mainly include: a.From the perspective of the frequency of LREs,the participants in group of four produced significantly more LREs than the pairs.b.From the perspective of the type of the LREs,both set ups produced more lexical LREs overall,while the lexical and grammatical LREs produced by participants in group of 4 were significantly higher than that of the pairs.c.In terms of the result of LREs,participants in group of four produced more correctly resolved LREs than the pairs and there is a significant difference between them.However,no significant difference was found between the two experimental groups in terms of incorrectly resolved and unresolved LREs.d.From the perspective of the length of LREs,the LREs produced by the group of four are significantly longer than those of the pairs.Secondly,the learner can retain the knowledge co-constructed in the solved LREs(correct or not)in collaborative writing task,and the number of participants has no effect on the retention of the solved LREs.Thus,two teaching suggestions for collaborative writing task in junior high school English class are put forward: On the one hand,it is better to use group of four when carrying out collaborative writing task if both pairs and groups of four meet the task requirement.On the other hand,teachers should help students when they meet language-related puzzles in collaborative writing task.