A Study Of The Development Of High School Students’ Writing Ability In Continuation Writing Task Based On Dynamic Systems Theory

Dynamic Systems Theory(DST)was introduced into the field of linguistics in the 1990s.The studies of Second Language Acquisition(SLA)based on DST regard language as a complex selfadaption system,in which the participants are followed up for a long period of time to examine the dynamic development track of their language ability with continuous spoken or written language data.The Continuation Writing Task(CWT),as a new form of writing task,has been paid great attention to,and most of the previous studies have proved the learning-promoting effect of CWT by horizontal research.However,few studies have been conducted to investigate the development process,interaction and contributing factors of the high school students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT based on the DST.Therefore,from the perspective of DST,this study explores the development of language accuracy,complexity and fluency of high school students’ writings in CWT,and further addresses the following three questions:1.How do the high school students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT develop?2.How do the high school students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT interact?3.What are the main factors that influence the changes of language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT and their interaction?In this study,a class in Grade 10 of Jinan No.1 High School in Shandong Province was selected as the participants,and the CWT was carried out every two weeks in a whole semester.Then,the writings of 6 students were selected to further describe the changes and interaction of language accuracy,complexity and fluency of the students with different writing proficiency levels,including two students of high,middle and low levels respectively.Using the analysis methods based on DST,that is,moving min-max graph and moving correlation,this study explores the development trend and interaction of the high school students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT.The factors affecting the language accuracy,complexity and fluency are analyzed by using thinking-aloud protocol and interviews.Through the analysis of writing texts and qualitative data,the present study finds that at group level,the students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT are all improved,especially fluency;complexity and fluency are highly correlated,while there is no significant correlation between language accuracy and the other two dimensions.At individual level,the development trends and interaction patterns of the students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency are different,showing dynamics and diversities.In addition,writing habits,writing strategies,experience and cultural background,writing motivation and attention distribution all have certain influence on the changes and interaction of language accuracy,complexity and fluency in students’ writing.Second language writing is a dynamic process with unbalanced development of various dimensions.Teachers should view the changes of students’ language accuracy,complexity and fluency in CWT at different levels from the perspective of dynamic systems theory,and take related factors into consideration to carry out targeted teaching to help students improve their writing ability in CWT.