A Study On The Influence Of Intensive Reading And Subsequent Writing On The Acquisition Of English Passive Voice In Junior High School Students

Being one of the most frequently used grammatical items in English,passive voice is the focus of grammar learning in junior high school.However,it is difficult for junior high school students to master it after learning,which can be attributed to two factors.One is that English passive voice is a complex grammar item for it contains the copula “be” verb and past participle,and it involves inflectional changes in tense and person.The other is that passive voice is rarely used in Chinese,so students may have difficulty understanding it.Although it is generally accepted that Chinese learners have problems in learning passive voice,few researchers have explored effective teaching methods of it.Xin Sheng(2017)found that enhanced continuation task can promote grammar learning.Therefore,this study combines enhanced continuation task with English passive voice learning,aiming to explore the influence of enhanced continuation on junior high school students' English passive voice acquisition from two aspects: the frequency and the accuracy.In this study,126 students of junior high school in Qingdao were selected as the research subjects.A teaching experiment and an interview were adopted to collect data.The researcher divided the subjects into three groups according to whether and how passive voice in the reading material was enhanced.Both group B and group C carried out enhanced continuation tasks,with passive voice increased and capitalized respectively.Subjects in group A were given a simple continuation task,passive voice not enhanced in the reading material.The three research questions are listed as follows:1.What is the immediate effect of the simple continuation task,the enhanced continuation task with increased font size and the enhanced continuation task with capitalized letters on junior high school students' acquisition of passive voice?2.What is the delayed effect of the simple continuation task,the enhanced continuation task with increased font size and the enhanced continuation task with capitalized letters on junior high school students' acquisition of passive voice?3.What are the differences between the simple continuation task,the enhanced continuation task with increased font size and the enhanced continuation task with capitalized letters in the immediate effect and the delayed effect on junior high school students' acquisition of passive voice?The data in this study are analyzed by the use of paired-sample T-test,One-way ANOVA in SPSS25.0 software.Together with the results obtained in the interview,the findings of this study are as follows:1.The simple continuation task and two enhanced continuation tasks all have significant immediate effect on junior high school students' acquisition of passive voice.2.The simple continuation task and two enhanced continuation tasks all have significant delayed effect on junior high school students' acquisition of passive voice.3.In terms of the between-group differences in immediate and delayed effect,both of the enhanced continuation tasks outperform the simple continuation task.In addition,between the two enhanced continuation tasks,the enhanced continuation task with increased font size has the most significant effect on junior high school students' acquisition and is most suitable for passive voice teaching.This study explores the effect of enhanced continuation tasks on junior high school students' English passive voice learning,and compares the differences between two types of enhanced continuation tasks.Apart from providing enlightenment for the teaching of English passive voice,this research also serves up a guidance for the choice of enhancement formats.