Genre effects on alignment and writing quality in the continuation task by Chinese EFL learners

Abstract Previous studies have repeatedly confirmed the robust alignment effect of the continuation task and its great potential to expedite second language writing and learning. The bulk of research in this respect, however, has mainly centred on the narrative genre, leaving the applicability of the task to other genres largely unexplored. This study endeavours to address this issue by comparing the alignment effect and writing performances of the task between the narrative and the expository genre. To this end, a cohort of 40 students from a Chinese university were recruited. They were required to complete two narrative and two expository continuation tasks over eight weeks. Participants’ continuation writings were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively for the purpose of capturing alignment effects. The results reveal that the expository continuation task elicited greater overall alignment, manifested in the greater amount of phrasal alignment, albeit smaller amount of sentential alignment. Irrespective of source text genre, students tacitly converged to the source text at various rhetoric and stylistic dimensions, exhibiting alignment in nuanced and multifaceted manner. Participants’ writing performances were found to be better on the expository task, indexed by greater accuracy and syntactic complexity. The findings suggest that the continuation task can be expanded to expository writing to effectively promote the teaching/learning of non-narrative writing. The implications for both L2 writing theory and pedagogy are discussed.