The Effect Of Comparative Continuation On Senior High School Students’ English Argumentative Writing

Argumentative writing is one essential ingredient for senior high school English teaching.However,for most senior high school students,it’s challenging to perform well in argumentative writing tasks because of their writing competence and writing anxiety.Some scholars suggested that Comparative Continuation(CC)can improve students’ argumentative writing competence and reduce their writing anxiety.However,no empirical study on the effect of CC on senior high school students’ argumentative writing is available.Therefore,this study aims at finding out the effect of CC on senior high school students’ argumentative writing.Based on the knowledge of input hypothesis,alignment and output hypothesis,adopting the methods of experiment,questionnaires and interview,the study compared the changes in students’ writing competence and writing anxiety before and after the experiment as well as explored the reasons causing these changes.125 students in one senior high school based in Chongqing were selected as Controlled Group(CG)and Experimental Group(EG).Furthermore,EG were divided into three levels: low level,medium level and high level.This study attempts to answer three main questions:(1)Does CC affect students’ argumentative writing competence in terms of claim,support,organization and language? If yes,how does it affect the four aspects?(2)How does CC influence students with different writing levels in terms of the quantity and writing competence of each level?(3)Is there any change in students’ writing anxiety in argumentative writing before and after the experiment? If yes,what’s the change?There are the following findings.Firstly,EG and CG made significant progress but EG made more progress.For one thing,two groups got higher scores and there’s no significant difference between two groups.EG made the most progress in support,followed by language,organization and claim while CG made the most progress in organization,followed by support,language and claim.For another,CC writing tasks enabled EG to make more progress than CG who took topic writing tasks.Before the experiment,CG outperformed EG while after the experiment,EG outperformed CG.Secondly,in EG,students’ number and average score of each level differently changed.In the low-level group,the number of students reduced;the scores of organization and language increased while the scores of claim and support reduced.In the medium-level group,the number of students reduced and the scores of four aspects increased.In the high-level group,the number of students increased;the scores of support and language increased while the scores of claim and organization remained the same.Thirdly,in EG,students slightly reduced their writing anxiety in argumentative writing.Before the experiment,EG were diagnosed with high level anxiety in avoidance behavior and medium level anxiety in somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety.After the experiment,students were with medium level anxiety in all dimensions and the averages of three dimensions reduced.Furthermore,the experiment mostly helped students reduce anxiety in cognitive anxiety,followed by somatic anxiety and avoidance behavior.According to the analysis,the changes in students’ writing competence and writing anxiety were influenced by their writing competence,writing frequency,English learning during two tests,personal characteristics,the experiment and academic assessment.In terms of the changes in writing competence,on the one hand,increasing writing frequency and nine-week English learning played a positive role in two groups’ improvement;on the other hand,CC writing tasks helped EG make more progress than CG and students with different levels in EG improved their writing competence at different degrees.As for the changes in writing anxiety,students’ high self-esteem,tendency to be influenced by others,poor performance in English writing and the academic assessment of them are influencing factors of their anxiety.Meanwhile,as the factors cannot be changed in a short period,students slightly reduced their writing anxiety after the experiment.Based on the discussion of three research questions and previous studies,the study confirmed the following hypotheses.CC writing tasks can advance senior high school students’ argumentative writing competence and reduce their writing anxiety in that CC writing tasks well follow the principles of input hypothesis,alignment and output hypothesis.Besides,the effect of CC is influenced by students’ present writingcompetence.The research verified the positive role of CC in senior high school students’ improving writing competence and reducing writing anxiety,put forward several suggestions for the application of CC to argumentative writing,and proposed prospects of further studies.