A Study On The Application Of The Continuation Task To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Among the language use skills,writing skills are an important language expression skill.The English Curriculum Standards for General High School（2017 Edition）clearly states the goals that high school students should achieve in English writing.Namely,when writing,students can pay attention to the logical relationship of writing content consciously,and be able to connect contexts with each other with the help of corresponding linguistic means.Besides,students can use appropriate vocabulary,grammatical structures and textual cohesion devices to enhance the coherence of language expression.However,the current writing level of many high school students does not meet the requirements of The New Standard,and the quality of students’ writing needs to be improved.Since its introduction in 2012,the continuation task method has gained the attention of many scholars and pedagogues,and is considered an effective method to improve the quality of students’ writing.Therefore,in order to improve the current situation of high school students’ English writing,the author applies the continuation task method to high school English writing teaching in an attempt to solve the following three questions:（1）What is the current situation of high school students’ English writing?（2）How can continuation task method be effectively applied to English writing teaching in high school?（3）Whether the continuation task method can improve the English writing performance of senior high school students?The author used students in senior classes 5 and 6 of a high school in Harbin City as the subjects of the experiment,in which class 5（the experimental class）was taught writing by the continuation task method and class 6（the control class）was taught by the proposition writing method.Before the experiment,the author used a questionnaire survey and a pre-writing test to understand the current situation of high school students’ English writing in order to prepare for the design and implementation of the continuation task method teaching model.After the experiment,the author used a post-writing test and an interview to understand the effects of this teaching model on high school students’ English writing.The results of this study revealed that: First,through the questionnaire survey and the pre-writing test,it can be seen that most high school students do not like English writing,and many of them have problems in their writing content,structure and language.Second,it was learned through writing tests and the interview that the continuation task teaching model designed by the author is effective.Based on the current English writing situation of high school students,the author designed and implemented a teaching model of the continuation task method consisting of the following five steps: article introduction,text combing,brainstorming,writing after reading and post-writing evaluation.After the experiment,through analyzing interview results and students’ scores in writing content,structure and language,the author learned that the experimental class students’ scores in writing content,structure and language were improved,and their attitudes toward writing were improved as well,which indicated the effectiveness of the continuation task teaching model designed by the author.Third,by comparing the writing scores before and after the experiment,we found that the continuation task method can help high school students improve their English writing performance.At the end of the experiment,the mean value of the overall students’ writing scores in the experimental class increased from 54.17 to57.75.And the writing scores of students in the high,middle and low levels of the experimental class increased from 59.50,54.75 and 47.67 to 59.75,59.71 and 51.83 respectively,which indicates that the continuation task method can improve students’ English writing performance,and it is more effective in improving the writing performance of intermediate and low level students.Although this study verified the effectiveness of the continuation task method in promoting English writing for high school students,there are still some shortcomings in this study,which need to be further improved in future practice.