The Impact Of Collaborative Writing On The English Continuation Task Of Senior High School Students

Of the four language skills,writing is regarded as one of the most important skills,particularly in high schools.However,Chinese EFL teachers tend to pay attention to the writing product rather than the writing process.The well-known pattern of writing instruction“students write and teacher corrects”,which is time-consuming and inefficient,has led to negative perceptions among students who view it as a skill they like the least.To highlight the text interaction and alignment during the process of writing,continuation task combines reading and writing and enables students to instantly use what are learned.Meanwhile,collaborative writing,which differs from the more teacher-dominant classroom in China,underlines interactive teaching and learning,and highlights the subjectivity and initiative of students’ learning.According to Zhejiang’s Reform Scheme,English continuation task made its debut in the College Entrance Examination of the year 2016 in Zhejiang Province.The current study intends to apply collaborative writing to the teaching practice of continuation task.More specifically,this thesis attempts to explore: 1)What are the differences between the texts produced by pairs and those finished by individuals? 2)What are the characteristics of the collaborative dialogues during the co-authoring process? 3)What are the students’ attitudes towards the use of collaborative writing in continuation task?As an empirical study,this research was conducted in a 45-student intact class in a key high school from Zhejiang Province,and 18 sophomore students(9 pairs)were selected as target participants.In addition to the completed texts,collaborative dialogues during the pair writing process were collected/ recorded and analyzed.Interviews,questionnaire and classroom observation were also carried out with the participants to gain their perceptions on their collaborative continuation experiences.The research lasted for nearly a whole semester,and the data collected included texts both written by pairs and individuals,collaborativedialogues,questionnaires,field notes,interviews and so on.The collected data indicated that collaborative writing had a positive impact on the English continuation task of senior high school students,and that the effect of interactive alignment noticed in continuation task was dramatically highlighted in the process of collaborative continuation.More precisely,although the comparison between completed texts showed some inconsistencies in terms of language,content and organization,collaborative continuation made a positive difference to the overall quality of pair works(especially in language and ideas).However,further analysis showed the length of the texts and different approaches to writing were not necessarily the result of texts’ higher quality.The analysis of the collaborative dialogues provided the evidence that pair work offers students chances to co-construct texts,pool their language and idea resources,and thus complete more linguistically complex and grammatically accurate texts.According to the survey of students’ perceptions to collaborative continuation tasks,most of the students in the study held a positive attitude to their collaborative writing experiences despite some reservations.Finally,pedagogical implications and suggestions for adopting collaborative continuation were provided based on the study.Teachers adopting the novel activity in class were expected to explain the benefits of collaborative continuation in advance,give the students the freedom to decide whether to write collaboratively or individually,and keep an eye on students’ dynamic attitudes towards collaborative continuation.On the other hand,the modeling collaborative interaction(in form of video clip or on-spot demonstration)was suggested to show them how to make negotiations on language and cope with disagreements.Meanwhile,teachers had better check the overall quality of students’ interaction throughout the writing process.