| As an indispensable part of language ability,writing plays an important role in the development of the core competence.However,the concept of English writing teaching nowadays is lagging behind and writing is usually separated from reading,leading to the low efficiency of writing teaching,and the limitation of students’ writing ability.The continuation task,combining reading with writing,proposed by Chinese scholar Wang Chuming,has a significant facilitating effect on L2 writing such as improving students’ writing ability,strengthening students’ writing motivation and stimulating students’ interest.However,writing strategy,as an important part of writing,there is no relevant research.Therefore,whether the continuation task can promote students’ writing strategy use is unknown.Besides,what is the writing strategy mechanism of the continuation task?Through an empirical research,this research aims to explore the effects of the continuation task on junior high school students’ use of English writing strategies.The research questions are as follows:(1)Can the continuation task promote junior high school students’ English writing strategy use? If so,what are the strategies most frequently used?(2)What are the differences of the strategy use in the continuation task of different level junior high school students?The participants of this research are 78 students in two parallel classes of junior one in a junior high school in Baiyun,Guangzhou.A 14-week teaching experiment is conducted.Students in each class are divided into 10 groups.During the experiment,they are required to do collaborative writing.The students in the experimental class accept the continuation task instruction while students in the control class accept topic writing training.During the experiment,both classes complete 6 writing assignments.At the same time,strategy questionnaires are conducted before and after the experiment.Quantitative data collected is analyzed by SPSS 26.0,and combined with the results of the interview,major findings are as follows.Firstly,the continuation task can promote students’ strategy use in English writing,and it can be used as a strategy training method.Compared with the pre-writing and revising stages,students use more strategies at the while-writing stage.As to the pre-writing stage,students in the experimental class are more willing to note down words or short notes related to the topic.As to the while-writing stage,using a wide range of sub-strategies,students’ meta-cognitive strategies are greatly improved.As to the revising stage,students in the experimental class tend to do self and peer corrections.All students are moderate strategy users overall.Secondly,compared with medium and low level students,high level students use more strategies during the whole writing process.At the pre-writing stage,there is no significant difference in the use of strategies between medium and low level students.Compared with medium and low level students,high level students conceive of and think about the structure of the article in their mind.At the while-writing stage,both high and medium level students show high frequency of strategy use.At the revising stage,all students perform similar strategy use.Additionally,different level students can be distinguished by the specific strategy use not by the frequency.Based on the results and discussion of the research,the following pedagogical implications can be drawn:(1)CT can be used as a strategy training method.The writing strategies most frequently used by students after the experiment can be regarded as the helpful and manageable strategy use of CT.(2)The recording card should be utilized properly to assist students’ use of appropriate strategies and monitor their own writing behaviors.If necessary,it’s advisable to identify and revise some items of the card during the process of writing.(3)Appropriate assistance to the strategy use should be offered to students of different levels accordingly. |
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