A Study On The Effects Of Continuation Task On Students' English Writing In Senior High School

English writing,as one of the five basic English skills of listening,speaking,reading,viewing and writing,is an important way for students to learn and apply English.At the same time,English writing is also an output skill,which requires students to output independently after obtaining enough input.It can be seen from the reform of English writing in College Entrance Examination successively launched by various provinces that the importance of English writing is becoming increasingly prominent.However,the current situation of English writing teaching and learning in senior high schools is not satisfactory.The main reasons are the lack of English knowledge reserve caused by cognitive factors,and the lack of motivation and writing anxiety caused by psychological factors.Therefore,how to improve the current situation of English writing teaching is worth teachers' thinking and practice.As a new writing method,continuation task was proposed by Professor Wang Chuming in 2012.The method aims to help students achieve alignment between context and language in the writing process by asking them to write an essay with ending removed.The realization of alignment means the occurrence of English learning.A large number of studies have proved the effectiveness of continuation task for students' English writing and learning,that is,it is helpful for students' cognition.However,there are few studies on its effect on students' writing anxiety.Therefore,this study applies the continuation task in senior high school,and tries to explore its influence on students' English writing achievement and English writing anxiety.To this end,the following two research questions are proposed:(1)What are the effects of continuation task on students' English writing performance?(2)What are the effects of continuation task on students' writing anxiety?This study selected 100 students from two classes in grade two of a key high school in Xining,Qinghai Province as the research objects,and carried out a three-month teaching experiment.In order to facilitate the study,the author randomly divided the two classes into experimental class and controlled class,with 46 students in the experimental class and 54 students in the controlled class.Students in the experimental class accepted continuation task while students in the controlled class continued to use the product-oriented method.This experiment mainly adopted three research tools,namely questionnaire,test and interview.Pre and post writing test scores were from the school formal examination.It was absolute rigorous from proposition to marking.The pre-test and post-test of the questionnaires were distributed during the self-study period,and the interview was conducted in the available time of the last week of the experiment.All the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0.The results showed that:(1)The pre-test writing scores of the two classes were not satisfactory.The post-test data showed that both the continuation task and product oriented method were helpful for students to improve their writing scores,but the continuation task was more significant.(2)The results of pre-questionnaire showed that the students of the two classes were with high degree of writing anxiety,post-questionnaire results showed that the continuation task can effectively reduce the students' overall writing anxiety,among them,the relief of somatic anxiety and avoidance behavior was most significantly,but had no obvious effect on cognitive anxiety.This study confirms that the continuation task can improve the English writing performance of senior high school students and reduce their English writing anxiety.At the same time,this method can also stimulate students' interest and desire in writing,which is beneficial to cultivate students' creativity and independent thinking ability.In addition,this study also provides references for future studies and feasible suggestions for English teaching in senior high school.However,due to the insufficient number of samples,short experiment time,the limited researchers' research ability,there are certain deficiencies in this study,which need to be further improved.