An Experimental Study On Effects Of Comparative Continuation On Lexical Richness In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

As an important index to measure the quality of learners’ writing and communication,lexical richness reflects learners’ ability of lexical production in English writing.Wang and other scholars have proved that comparative continuation has positive effect on students’ learning,but few of them focus on the effect of comparative continuation on lexical richness.Therefore,based on Continuation Theory,Input-output Theory and Interactive Alignment theory,this study aims to find out the influence of comparative continuation on lexical richness in English writing of senior high school students,and discuss the following two research questions:(1)What are the effects of comparative continuation on the lexical richness in English writing of senior high school students?(2)What are the different effects of comparative continuation on the lexical richness in English writing of senior high school students at different English writing levels?A total of 60 students from two classes of a senior high school in Guangdong Province participated in this experiment which lasted for 10 weeks,and the two classes were divided into experimental class and control class.Before the experiment,both the experimental class and the control class finished the pre-test in order to testify that there was no significant difference of lexical richness between the two classes;meanwhile,the experimental class was divided into three groups(high-score group,middle-score group and low-score group)according to their scores in the pre-test.During the experiment,the experimental class implemented comparative continuation training while the control class implemented topic writing training;during the process of 6-week writing training,both the experimental class and the control class finished 3 writing tasks respectively and then completed the post-test.After the whole experiment,Range 32 and other software were used to calculate the lexical richness of the writing texts collected in this study,and the Independent Sample T-test and Paired Sample T-test in SPSS 21 were utilized to analyze the data.The results of data analysis show that comparative continuation has positive effects on the development of lexical richness in English writing of senior high school students,and it is more significant in the dimensions of lexical variation and lexical sophistication.However,the results also indicate that there is no obvious effect on lexical density.For students in different score groups,in terms of lexical variation,comparative continuation has significant influence on students in middle-score group,while there is no significant effect on high-score group students and low-score group students.At the aspect of lexical sophistication,comparative continuation has significant influence on students in high-score group,middle-score group and low-score group.Finally,in terms of lexical density,there is no significant effect on the students in high-score group,middle-score group and low-score group.Therefore,teachers can apply comparative continuation task to vocabulary teaching and writing teaching.During the process,the teacher should pay attention to the different levels of students and select reading materials suitable for their English levels so as to strengthen the interactive alignment effect between input and output of students and promote their development of lexical richness in writing.