| As the rules and idiomatic usage of a language,grammar is essential in oral and written expression.In traditional English classrooms,students spend a lot of time learning grammar rules in high school.Still,their learning effect remains unsatisfactory,thus making grammar learning a significant challenge for high school students.The continuation task,a new approach proposed by Wang(2012),has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad in the foreign language community and offers a new method of grammar teaching and a possibility to solve senior high school students’ grammar learning dilemma.Additionally,most studies on the continuation task have focused on the effects on the accuracy and fluency of writing and students’ learning of vocabulary,while few studies have focused on the effects on English grammar learning.Considering that English grammar learning has always been a challenge and that non-finite verbs as adverbial are both a focus and a difficulty in learning,which are also the mandatory grammar items in the annual College Entrance Examination,this study examines the effects of continuation task condition on English grammar learning.Specifically,this study investigates the effect of the acquisition of non-finite verbs as adverbial by senior high school students under different continuation tasks,with the following research questions.(a)Does the continuation task promote the acquisition of non-finite verbs as adverbial by senior high school students?(b)How do the conventional continuation task and the intensified continuation task affect the acquisition of non-finite verbs as adverbial by senior high school students?(immediate and delayed impact)(c)In the intensified continuation task,what are the effects of explicit and implicit enhancements on the acquisition of non-finite verbs as adverbial by senior high school students.(d)Does the intensified continuation task have different effects on senior high school students’ learning of different types of non-finite verbs as adverbial?This study conducted an eight-week experiment with 250 second-year students in a senior high school in Henan Province in the sequence of "pre-test-treatment-post-test-delayed test." In the experiment,Class A was the control group(CG),and all three classes,B,C,and D,were the experimental groups(EG1,EG2,EG3)given the continuation tasks.The reading materials for EG1 were unprocessed except for necessary Chinese annotations,while the reading materials for EG2 and EG3 were processed with underlined sentences in boldface related to the non-finite verbs as adverbial,combined with specific tasks with the requirement of studying the processed structures carefully and continuing the story with the use of non-finite verbs as adverbial.EG3 was taught through a brief explanation of the use of non-finite verbs as adverbial and then completed the intensified continuation,which was the difference between EG2 and EG3.At the end of the experiment,all data were entered into SPSS 24.0 for analysis and testing.The results of three continuation tasks and grammar tests were analyzed to investigate whether there was a significant increase in the accuracy of students’ using non-finite verbs as adverbial in their writing and the scores of the three classes.Here are the results of the study:(1)The continuation task can promote the acquisition of non-finite verbs as adverbial by senior high school students.(2)Compared with the the conventional continuation task,senior high school students who conducted the intensified continuation task have a better performance in learning non-finite verbs as adverbial.(3)In the intensified continuation task,both implicit and explicit enhancement are better than the only implicit enhancement.(4)The intensified continuation task has different effects on different types of non-finite verbs as adverbial learning.Besides,students have the highest proficiency in the infinitives,followed by the-ing participles and finally the-ed participles. |
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