Incorporating iterative continuation tasks into EFL writing courses

Abstract

This study explored how the iterative continuation task can be incorporated into a writing course in a setting for English as a foreign language (EFL). It investigated the effectiveness of the iterative continuation task in influencing senior high school students’ writing performance and their writing attitudes. Eighty-four year-one students from a China’s provincial senior high school participated in the study. They were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, each consisting of 42 students. The experimental group was subjected to six turns of reading–writing continuation tasks, whereas the control group continued with the previous practice of a single turn of reading–writing continuation tasks. Data were collected from writing tests and questionnaires. The results show that the iterative continuation task helped improve students’ writing performance in lexis and grammar rather than organization and content and it also had a positive impact on changing students’ writing attitude, especially on the dimensions of writing perception and writing process. The iterative continuation task has been proved to be a facilitative pedagogical approach for language development in EFL senior high school contexts.