Effects Of Input Languages In Continuation Tasks On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Performance

As an important skill that each language learner is expected to grasp,writing occupies a very important place in English teaching in senior high schools.Whereas,vague content,improper use of language,and incoherent text have always been problems in senior high school English teaching.On the one hand,learners need to make progress in conceiving contents,designing layout and choosing words.On the other hand,there is an urgent need for an effective way of promoting senior high school students’ written English ability.On the basis of the"learn-together-use-together" principle,Wang(2012)proposed continuation task which provided a fresh perspective for L2 writing teaching.Voluminous studies have been conducted to explore the positive effect of continuation task on different dimensions of writings with undergraduate English majors as research participants.However,relatively few studies have been carried out on the effects of input languages on senior high school students’ writing performance in continuation task.Therefore,taking alignment,Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis as the theoretical foundation,this research intends to explore how different input languages affect senior high school students’ English writings in terms of linguistic complexity,accuracy and fluency(CAF)in continuation task.After measuring all of the indicators concerning CAF in students’ writings,this research answered the following three questions:(1)How are the linguistic complexity,accuracy and fluency of students’ writing affected by the linguistic complexity of the pre-reading materials in their target language in continuation task?(2)How are the linguistic complexity,accuracy and fluency of students’ writing affected by the pre-reading materials in their mother tongue as compared with pre-reading materials in their target language in continuation task?(3)What are the students’ attitudes towards pre-reading materials in different input languages?The research adopted a mixed method,with quantitative approach serving as the primary method and qualitative approach serving as the auxiliary method.In a high school in northeast China,66 students(22 students from each class)were randomly selected in total from three parallel classes and were divided into three groups.Each group was assigned to conduct a continuation task according to a pre-reading material within the required time.The pre-reading materials for three groups were the original English version,the simplified English version and the Chinese translation version of the same material respectively.The lexical complexity,syntactic complexity,accuracy as well as fluency of collected writings were calculated by Lexical Complexity Analyzer(LCA)and L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer(L2SCA).SPSS 27 was then used for statistical analysis.In addition,3 students were randomly selected from each of the three groups.Through semi-structured interviews,students’ interest and attitude towards their pre-reading materials were investigated.The research shows that the complexity,accuracy and fluency of the language output varied to some extent,along with the advance of linguistic complexity of the input languages.Specifically speaking,students who read the original English version performed better than students who read the simplified English version in lexical complexity,syntactic complexity,accuracy,and fluency of writings.Pre-reading materials in target language had a positive effect on students’ writing performance in lexical complexity,accuracy and fluency of writings.But it had no significant effect on syntactic complexity.Students who read pre-reading materials in their mother tongue had a more thorough understanding of the pre-reading materials,but made more errors.Besides,according to the results of the interviews,students prefer the original English version to the simplified and Chinese versions.The findings of this study enriches the empirical study of continuation task to some extent,verifies the importance of alignment in language acquisition,broadens the application range of Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis.Based on the above results,pedagogical recommendations for English writing teachers in senior high schools are proposed.Firstly,in continuation task,teachers need to select original version as pre-reading materials aiming at students’ interests so that they can better draw on the original expressions and produce more accurate sentences in the subsequent writing process.Secondly,writing teachers are expected to realize that continuation task is not simply a writing process,but an integration of reading and writing.While selecting pre-reading materials,on the one hand,students’ overall target language proficiency should be taken into consideration.On the other hand,the chosen materials shouldn’t pose barriers to students’ reading comprehension thus affect their subsequent writings.Thirdly,pre-reading materials in target language are preferred in continuation task which may facilitate alignment and help students produce more natural and fluent expressions in target language.Finally,teachers in senior high schools are encouraged to access the relevant research on continuation task both domestic and international to better understand its mechanism and apply it in daily English writing teaching.