The Construct of the Story Continuation Writing Task: Insights From the China’s Standards of English Language Ability

Abstract Although the story continuation writing task (SCWT) has attracted much research attention, few studies have investigated the construct of the task, particularly with respect to which language competence it focuses on. In addition, although some studies have demonstrated that China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) provides comprehensive insights into the development of Chinese learners’ English language proficiency, little research has investigated the relationship between CSE and SCWT. This study drew upon the CSE to develop an SCWT language use inventory to address the above research gaps. A total of 358 high school students were asked to complete the questionnaire, of which 277 valid responses were analyzed. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the CSE-based questionnaire revealed the presence of six factors, namely language correctness, language variety, task planning, connecting-and-generating, selecting-and-mining, and organizing. The strategy of connecting-and-generating was the only significant predictor of the learners’ SCWT scores. The paper also discusses the findings relating to the SCWT rating and other integrated writing tasks.