A Research On The Reliability Of Senior High Students’ Writing Proficiency Measured By Continuation Writing

Continuation tasks are theoretically rooted in reading-writing connections and alignment effects,aiming to motivate students to write and promote their writing ability by encouraging them to read advanced materials and learn to imitate useful expressions used in them.To respond to the call of College Entrance Examination reform and New English Curriculum Standards for senior high students,continuation task has been employed as one of the writing tasks to test students’ writing proficiency in the College Entrance Examination in many regions.On the basis of the research of continuation task employed as a teaching method and testing item,this research investigated the viewpoints teachers held towards the teaching of continuation tasks and how teachers implemented the teaching procedures,perceived the challenges the teaching of continuation tasks is facing and used a teaching experiment to compare the writing scores students gain in continuation writing and practical writing tests.The research intended to answer the following questions:(1)How do English teachers in senior high school perceive the differences between teaching results of practical writing and continuation writing?(2)What are the differences between the writing scores senior high students acquire in practical writing tests and continuation writing tests?This research reviewed related literature to figure out the theoretical basis and teaching requirements of continuation task.Based on these,questionaries were designed to collect the viewpoints of 52 teachers who carry out the teaching of continuation writing towards the teaching results of continuation task and teaching means they utilize.To further explore the challenges the teaching of continuation task is facing,3 teachers are interviewed.On the basis of teaching requirements of continuation task,a teaching experiment of practical writing and continuation task is conducted during the research.The experiment lasts 12 weeks.1 separate lesson of practical writing and continuation task is given per week.Tests of practical writing and continuation task are held every four weeks.The testing results are collected and scored by items from the perspective of writing content,language and organization.By comparing students’ scores in the three tests,the differences between the writing scores students achieve in continuation writing tests and practical writing tests will be analyzed.Statistics from questionaries and results of interviews suggest most teachers support the theoretical basis of continuation task.But over half of them hold negative attitudes towards its teaching results.This is because the teaching methods employed by teachers in reality cannot fully meet the teaching requirements of continuation task in theory,which can be observed in the following ways:(1)insufficient teaching time which leads to the low frequency of the teaching of continuation task;(2)poor interactive alignment effect between students and the language of reading materials because it is rarely performed by teachers in class;(3)inadequate language proficiency of students.Students find it hard to meet the requirements of continuation task,which evoked their fear towards the continuation task.Besides,results of the experiment show significant differences between students’ writing scores of each item in practical writing tests and continuation writing test.What’s more,their scores in the former are observably higher than those in the latter.Students writing scores in continuation writing tests are influenced by their reading and thinking abilities,which causes the differences of writing proficiency measured in continuation writing tests and practical writing tests.