A Study On The Effects Of Continuation Task Teaching On Sentence Variety In English Writing Of Senior High School

English writing is the written expression of English learners’ thoughts.Among all the factors that influence students’ writing quality,syntax is one of the key elements.However,when it comes to current high school English instruction,teachers use a single approach to teaching writing,students’ sentence patterns of writing are single,and the content of writing is homogeneous.As a result,many scholars have conducted many explorations on writing teaching methods.In recent years,Continuation Task has been used as a new attempt to teach a second language.Based on the Interactive Alignment theory,Continuation Task Teaching enables students to notice the content,structure and language of the reading material and then apply it to their own continuation compositions.Based on the reflection of the current state of English writing teaching in high schools and the English language proficiency required of high school students,the study adopts an experimental research method to explore the impact of Continuation Task Teaching on English writing.This study aims to answer three research questions:(1)What effects does the Continuation Task Teaching have on senior high school students’ attitude toward English writing?(2)How does the Continuation Task Teaching affect the sentence variety in English writing of senior high school?(3)How does the Continuation Task Teaching affect the sentence variety of students at different levels?To begin with,the author has developed a theoretical framework for this study on the basis of the Input Hypothesis,the Output Hypothesis,the Interactive Alignment Theory and the “Extension” Theory.As this study focused on the changes in individual learners’ sentence variety over time,the author selected only one class from a senior high school for a 12-week experimental study.To investigate how Continuation Task Teaching affects high school students’ attitudes towards English writing,a combination of questionnaires and interviews were used to conduct the study and to obtain relevant data.Secondly,sentence variety index was used to analyze the compositions of the two pre-and post-writing tests,and the results were statistically analyzed by using Microsoft Excel software.This step is to examine the effect of Continuation Task Teaching on the sentence variety of high school students’ English writing.The study found that Continuation Task Teaching had a significant impact on students’ attitudes towards writing,as students became more active in three areas: affective,cognitive and behavioral tendencies after the experiment.In terms of sentence variety,although the change in sentence patterns varied among students of different English levels,the experimental class in general showed a significant increase in the variety of sentences used in the post-test compositions.This study demonstrates that Continuation Task teaching helps students overcome their fear of writing,develop their confidence in writing,and enhance their sentence variety,which in turn improves their English writing ability.In addition,this study focused on four indicators of sentence variety in students’ English writing,and reveals the impact of the Continuation Task Teaching on students’ sentence variety in English writing,which has positive implications for both teaching and learning in current English writing classrooms.