As a new testing form,the continuation task aims to cultivate students’comprehension,creativity,writing ability and so on.Liu and Chen(2016)mentioned that this type of task was suitable for high-stakes exams such as New National College Entrance Examination,andcould effectively promote learning through assessment.They stressed the assessmentobjectives of this writing test form,saying that when scoring and assessing students’continuation task,four main aspects should be considered:(1)The coverage of the maininformation of the content,as well as the clarity and rationality of the expression;(2)Therichness,accuracy,and appropriateness of using vocabulary and grammatical structure;(3)The coherence of context and the coherence of the entire text;(4)Creative thinking ability.According to the National Education Examinations Authority(2015),the scoring criteria forthe continuation task are divided into five levels.The fifth level of the scoring criteria for thecontinuation task clearly states,“The continuation should be highly coherent with the givenpassage and logically connect with the provided opening sentences of each subsequentparagraph”.
2.2 Studies of Complexity and Accuracy
2.2.1 Definition of Complexity and Accuracy
From the perspective of linguistic features,the definitions of complexity and accuracyare as follows.Firstly,complexity refers to the difficulty level of students’languageexpression,mainly including syntactic complexity and lexical complexity.Syntacticcomplexity refers to the variation and degree of complexity in language forms in languageproduction(Crossley et al.2016).Lexical complexity focuses on the performance of languageproduction in terms of vocabulary diversity and complexity(Johnson 2017).Yuan(2014)saidthat English sentence structures were relatively complex,and the length of embeddedlinguistic units,the number of embedded structures,the variety of structural types,and thedegree of structural complexity could all serve as indicators for measuring syntacticcomplexity.Secondly,accuracy is usually defined as the correctness of students’word usage,collocations,and sentence structures in written language.
But scholars are paying increasing attention to the issue of accuracy,where accuracyrefers not only to linguistic precision but also to the correctness of content.For example,Wang(2016)pointed out that in the process of continuation task,according to the theory ofalignment,the most important thing was an accurate understanding of the material.Thisindicates that there is a close relationship between an accurate understanding of the originaltext and the quality of the continuation task.Therefore,the accuracy of this study is conductedfrom the perspective of alignment theory.
Chapter Three Theoretical Framework ...................... 22
3.1 Thematic Structure ......................... 22
3.1.1 Classification and Realization ..................... 22
3.1.2 Theme and Mood ................... 26
Chapter Four Research Methodology ...................... 35
4.1 Research Questions ............................ 35
4.2 Participants ................................. 35
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ...................... 51
5.1 Effects of Teaching Based on TP Patterns on the Complexity ........ 51
5.1.1 Effects of Theme Types on the Complexity in Pre-test and Post-test ............................... 53
5.1.2 Effects of TP Patterns on the Complexity in Pre-test and Post-test ........................... 60
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Effects of Teaching Based on TP Patterns on the Complexity
According to Wang and Qi’s(2013)specific descriptions of the requirements for thecontinuation task,there are th
