原创博文1

Effect of Collaborative Continuation Task on Chinese EFL learners’ Written Production

Continuation task is relatively new in second language acquisition research, but has received much attention in recent years. It is brought forward on the basis of alignment effect. According to Wang & Wang(2014), the concept of alignment generally refers to the coordinated and adopted human behavior in a socio-cognitive process. Alignment effect implies in interaction, thus, if there is no interaction, there is no alignment effect, and in the other way around, the higher the degree of the interaction is, the stronger the alignment effect will be( Pickering & Garrod 2004).

  Wang (2010,2011) states that the efficacy of foreign language learning depends on the alignment effect between language comprehension and production. The stronger the alignment effect, the better the learning outcome. Wang(2012) claims that there is an asymmetry between learners’ ability of language comprehension and production. Learner’s comprehension ability is always greater than learner’s production ability. Therefore, when the alignment effect is created during interaction between language comprehension and production, learner’s lower comprehension ability will be improved by the push of higher production ability. Base on the concept of alignment effect, Wang (2012) puts forward continuation task, “a task which closely connects comprehension and production, combing the imitation of language and creation of new content, becoming a good method to improve foreign language learning efficacy”.

   Following Wang’s study, a series of empirical researches have been conducted on the continuation task (Chen 2013, Wang & Yuan 2013, Wang & Wang 2014, Xiao 2013, Xue2013, Yuan 2013), proving the efficacy of continuation task in L2 acquisition. However, all these already conducted empirical studies focus on the continuation task completed by individual. As Wang (2012) points out, the possibly drawback of written continuation task is that the interaction between student and reading material is one-way interaction because reading material is static. In order make up for this possible drawback, Wang(2012) suggests that teachers might assign two students to finish one continuation task, therefore, increasing the degree of interaction and activate students’ imagination. By this way, the alignment effect is intensified and the learning outcome might be better. Wang(2012) also points out that the effect of this method needs to be further test by empirical studies.

The aforementioned method which is to finish one continuation task by more than one student is defined here as collaborative continuation task. So far, no empirical research has been conducted to examine the effect of collaborative continuation task on Chinese EFL learner’s written production. Therefore, the purpose of this empirical study is to fill this gap and examine the questions formulated:

(1) Does collaborative continuation task effective to the accuracy, consistency and complexity of Chinese EFL learners’ English writing?

(2) If it is effective, is it more effective than continuation task completed by individual in terms of improving the accuracy, consistency and complexity of Chinese EFL learners’ English writing?

Reference

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