A Study Of The Application Of Continuation Task In Senior High School English Writing Instruction

There is no doubt about the significance of writing in English learning.Writing is also regarded as a substantial index to measure students’ comprehensive language ability.Nevertheless,it’s not satisfactory about the current status of senior high school students’ English writing.The imperfection of interest and motivation in writing should be responsible for their underachieved writing performance and undeveloped writing competence.Therefore,it is urgent for English teachers to choose appropriate and effective writing methods.The continuation task,proposed by Professor Wang Chuming(2012),is expected to effectively facilitate second language learning with the integrating of reading and writing.Following a detailed review of the relevant literature,it is evident that the continuation task has attracted the attention of scholars in the field of English as a foreign language.The empirical research on senior high school English writing,however,is still relatively little.The theories of input-output hypothesis and interactive alignment are fortified as the theoretical framework of this study.Based on the relevant research on the correlation between reading and writing conducted by scholars in the field of foreign language teaching at home and abroad,this thesis tries to explore the effect of continuation task on senior high school students’ English writing performance and attitude through a 14-week teaching experiment.In this study,60 students from two intact classes were randomly selected from Yimin Senior High School in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture of Gansu province as the research subjects.Class 6 was randomly selected as the experimental class,instructed by the continuation task.Class 4 was the control class,and the traditional writing method was adopted.The teaching treatment was implemented with the assistance of questionnaires,tests,and interviews.Two research questions are investigated in this study:(1)What effects does the continuation task have on improving the complexity,accuracy,and fluency of English writing in senior high school?(2)What effects does the continuation task have on the attitude of senior high school students towards English writing? This study applies the continuation task in senior three English writing teaching and tries to provide some reference for English writing teaching practice in senior high school.By analyzing the collected data,the conclusion reveals that the continuation task makes a great contribution to improving senior high school students’ English writing performance,especially in the aspects of complexity and accuracy,while in fluency,there is no significant difference.At the same time,this study concludes that the continuation task can improve students’ attitude towards writing.Therefore,teachers are expected to take advantage of the relationship of reading and writing,maximizing the use of continuation task to enhance students’ second language learning efficiency and writing performance.