A Study On The Effects Of Continuation Task On The Usage Of English Past Tense By Senior High School Students

Recently,the continuation task has attracted extensive attention from researchers domestic and overseas.As grammar is an important part of English learning,it is especially important to find ways to teach grammar that can improve its accuracy.The effects of the continuation tasks are closely related to the degree of attention.Virtually,empirical evidence is needed to support whether learners’ attention to grammar knowledge leads to differences in acquisition,especially the past tense.The study offers insights about whether strength of attention affect the synergistic effect of target forms and probes into the methods of teaching the past tense.The study chooses past tense as the target structure and contrasts the differences in the synergistic effect of the past tense between two kinds of the continuation tasks.Based on input hypothesis,output hypothesis and alignment theory,the three principal issues are approached as follows:1)What is the impact of the ordinary continuation task on the accuracy of English past tense for high school students? Is there the impact of the retention on the past tenses?2)What is the impact of the enhanced continuation task on the accuracy of English past tense for high school students? Is there the impact of the retention on the past tenses?3)What is the impact of continuation task conditions on the accuracy on three types of past tense?In this study,90 students of first-year high school were enrolled during the 12 weeks experiment in Heze by means of experiments and interviews.Classes A and B were pretested before the experiment;during the experiment,both classes performed the continuation tasks.Class A had no annotation cues in the reading material other than the necessary Chinese annotations,while class B’s reading material under the same conditions was underlined for target structure of the past tense;after the experiment,both classes were post-tested and delayed post-tested respectively.Based on the data obtained,the following conclusions are drawn by SPSS 25.0.The enhanced continuation task can remarkably enhance the accuracy of English past tense;Both of the two tasks have the impact of retention on past tense;The accuracy of simple past tense and past continuous are notably higher than past perfect tense under the conditions of the continuation tasks.The results note that the continuation tasks improve accuracy of the usage of the past tense,and facilitate tailored and practical suggestions for teaching past tense.