A Comparative Study On The Effects Of Collaborative And Individual Continuation Task On High School Students’ English Writing

Wang Chuming(2012)proposed that continuation task can effectively improve foreign language learning ability.It can stimulate students’ interest in writing and cultivates their logical,critical and creative thinking through language input and output,learning and application,imitation and creativity,which is different from the previous teacher-led writing classroom.But this alignment effect is not bidirectional,that is,the effect only exists between the student and the reading material.Therefore,the alignment effect can be improved by introducing interpersonal interaction into the process of continuation task.For example,students are encouraged to complete a continuation task training in a collaborative way,so as to enhance the interaction.However,it still needs to be tested by empirical research whether the learning promotion effect of this method is obvious.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to test whether the introduction of interpersonal interaction in the process of continuation task is conducive to enhancing alignment effect and improving the senior high school students’ English writing level by comparing the effects of collaborative and individual continuation on the accuracy and complexity of high school students’ English writing language.In this study,60 students from a senior high school in Nanan District of Chongqing were selected as the participants of this research.They were divided into collaborative continuation task group and individual continuation task group randomly by comparative experiment method,there are 30 students in each group.The entire experiment lasted for 8 weeks,which included pre-test,teaching experiment and post-test.All subjects’ accuracy and complexity of writing language in pre-test and post-test were evaluated by T-unit according to the measurement indexes established by Wolfe-Quintero(1998),and the data collected in the evaluation were analyzed by SPSS26.This study explores the following two issues:(1)Whether there is a significant difference in writing language accuracy between the two groups after the experiment.(2)Whether there is a significant difference in writing language complexity between the two groups after the experiment.The results show that:(1)peer collaborative continuation plays a significant role in improving the accuracy of high school students’ English writing,especially in improving the accuracy of grammar,vocabulary and discourse cohesion;(2)Peer collaboration continuation has a significant effect on high school students’ English writing complexity,especially in the using of dependent clause.From the research conclusion,we can get some enlightenment on foreign language teaching: First of all,in the teaching process of continuation task,teachers can combine individual continuation task with peer collaboration continuation task to improve its effect in promoting L2 learning.Moreover,teachers need to choose the method of continuation task on the basis of students’ current level and cognitive style,so as to improve the accuracy and complexity of their writing.Third,the selected reading materials should be suitable for learners’ foreign language level.