Effects Of Task Frequency Of Reading-to-Write Task On Senior High School Students' English Writing

Frequency effects originate from psychology and have attracted wide attention in the field of second language acquisition.Owing to the monopolization of language nativism in the field of linguistics for decades,frequency effects have always been neglected.With many new subjects springing up,their study results query language nativism and show frequency that plays an important role in language learning.Among the studies conducted at home and abroad so far,most of them have emphasized frequency effects on English listening and speaking,the author found that few studies related to English writing are performed.This research is just for filling the blank.The thesis attempts to investigate the frequency effects on senior high school students' English writing quality in terms of content,organization and language use.The research includes an analysis of the three questions:(1)Does students' interest improve on English writing under the influence of task frequency? What are students' attitudes towards the task frequency on English writing?(2)What are effects of task frequency on writing content,organization and language use?(3)Does task frequency help improve students' English writing proficiency? The study conducts two rounds of writing tasks with two parallel classes of Grade Three students from a key senior high school and lasts for seven weeks.The two parallel classes are randomized to experimental class and control class.The experiment is conducted on every Wednesday evening.Three writings are considered as a round of writing task.Before the experiment,the same pre-questionnaire is provided to the experimental class and control class respectively to observe their attitudes towards English writing.During the experiment,the students of experimental class repeated the same reading-to-write task for three times within three consecutive weeks,while the students of control class practiced three different tasks respectively.And then repeat the experiment process again.In the seventh week,the two classes are required to finish the same composition on a new topic.By the end of the study,two post-questionnaires are given out to both classes.A supplementary part is added only for the experimental class.The author observed and analyzed the students' improvements on English writing and tried to figure out the changes on writing content,organization and language use and their attitudes and evaluations towards task frequency by using questionnaires.The data collection is divided into two parts.One is the survey of the students' writing scores and some related data are used to analyze the changes that students have made in the process of the experiment.The other is a questionnaire which is used to observe students' attitudes towards English writing.Students' attitudes towards task frequency and the changes in students' attitudes towards English writing before and after experiment are also included in the survey.Major findings of the study are summarized as follows: A majority of the subjects hold a positive attitude towards task frequency on English writing and their confidence in writing also enhances during the process but they hope teachers can give guidance and feedback.As for the experimental class,task frequency can enrich the content and obviously improves the fluency,accuracy and lexical diversity.But there is no significant difference in organization and syntactic complexity.Control class also has made progress,but no significant difference exists.Therefore the conclusion can be reached that task frequency can improve students' writing proficiency.By exploring the different roles of frequency in the development of English writing from various perspectives,the study deepens understanding of frequency effects and gives pedagogical implications to the teaching of English writing.The teachers can adopt the way of task frequency appropriately to make best use of the effects of practice frequency to help improve students' writing proficiency.Under the guidance of task frequency,students can enhance their confidence in writing so as to improve their writing proficiency.