An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Comparative Continuation On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Self-efficacy

The level of English writing self-efficacy is significantly positively correlated with students’ English writing ability and directly affects their writing achievement.However,it has been found that students’ English writing self-efficacy is far from satisfactory in senior high school.Research has shown that comparative continuation can awaken positive emotions and expressive motivation during the writing process,which has a promoting effect on learning.However,current research is primarily focusing on the continuation task,with less research on other forms of it.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the effects of comparative continuation on senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy and to answer the following two research questions:(1)Can comparative continuation improve senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy?(2)What are the differences between the effects of comparative continuation on senior high school students’ English writing task self-efficacy and English writing skill self-efficacy?This study takes two parallel classes of Grade 1 in a senior high school in Heyuan City,Guangdong Province,as the participants.A questionnaire was distributed before the treatment to measure students’ level of English writing self-efficacy.The treatment lasted ten weeks,during which the EC conducted comparative continuation while the CC engaged in traditional proposition writing.Another questionnaire was distributed after the treatment,and a semi-structured interview was conducted in the EC.The aim of the treatment is to compare the effects of comparative continuation on senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy.The results show that compared with proposition writing,comparative continuation can significantly improve senior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy.At the same time,compared with English writing task self-efficacy,comparative continuation can significantly improve English writing skill self-efficacy.The findings of this study have implications for senior high school English writing teaching as follows:(1)The implementation of comparative continuation in senior high school is feasible,and teachers should carefully select and design writing tasks when using it.(2)Teachers should actively introduce various genres to students and innovate in terms of genre and structure when using comparative continuation.