SHANGHAI JIAO TONG UNIVERSITY

学士学位论文
BACHELOR’S THESIS

论文题目：视听续写与复述任务的协同效应

学生姓名: 陈铖
学生学号: 517141910014
专 业: 英语（翻译）
指导教师: 王哲希
学院(系): 外国语学院
 SHANGHAI JIAO TONG UNIVERSITY

BACHELOR’S THESIS

Paper Title： Alignment Effect of Video-based

Continuation and Retelling Tasks

Name: Chen Cheng

Student Number: 517141910014
Major: English（Translation）
Instructor: Wang Zhexi
School: School of Foreign Languages
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上海交通大学
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Acknowledgements

During the process of this thesis writing, I have received a lot of help and assistance
that from knowledgeable people around me. Throughout the four years of
undergraduate study at English Department, School of Foreign Language, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, a large number of people have helped and supported me. I owe
my gratitude to all those people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor,
Zhexi Wang for her continuous support of my study. Her patience, motivation,
constructive suggestions and thoughtful insights helped me in the research and writing
of the thesis.
Secondly, my sincere thanks go to all professors who have coached me. Their
earnest lectures and instructions helped me better equipped with English language
competency.
Thirdly, I give my thanks to all the participants in the experiment of the study.
Additionally, I would like to thank my classmates and friends for making my
undergraduate life so wonderful and unforgettable.
Finally, I must express my profound gratitude to my parents and my family for
supporting and encouraging me throughout my years of study. Thank you for always
being with me.
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视听续写与复述任务的协同效应

摘要

本研究以上海某高校英语专业二年级的 30 名学生为研究对象，基于互动协同模型与
“续”论，从句子层面探索视听续写对协同效应的影响。本研究通过考察被试作文中显性借
用、完整隐性借用、部分隐性借用原文的 T 单位比例，比较了视听续写与视听复述这两种续
作任务所引发的协同效应。研究结果发现，两种任务均不存在明显的显性借用，但均存在不
同程度的隐性借用，其中，视听复述的隐性借用比例显著高于视听续写。可见，视听复述相
比于视听续写任务更能促进学习者与原材料之间的互动和协同，且主要体现在情境模式层
面，两种任务在语言形式层面的协同极少存在。在外语教学中，可以通过视听续写这一方法
激发学生的学习兴趣、增长见闻，充分发挥逻辑推理能力和想象力进行大胆的创想和思维开
拓的尝试，但寄望于其在此过程中学习原材料的语言表达可能会收效甚微。复述作为一种传
统的学习方法，依旧有其可取之处。

关键词：视听续写，视听复述，协同效应，互动，输入与输出
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Alignment Effect of Video-based Continuation and Retelling

Tasks

ABSTRACT

Taking the interactive alignment model and “continuation” theory as the theoretical
framework, the present study investigates alignment effects in video-based continuation
and retelling tasks. The participants are 30 sophomore English majors.
The study compares the alignment effects caused by the two continuation tasks by
examining the proportions of T-units in textual borrowing, which are divided into three
categories: verbatim source use (word-for-word borrowing), full implicit source use
and partial implicit source use (paraphrasing or summarizing).
The results show that there is little noteworthy verbatim source use for either task;
implicit borrowing ratio of video-based retelling is significantly higher than that of
video-based continuation.
This indicates that video-based retelling task can promote the interaction between
the learner and the source materials and produce more alignment effect than the video-
based continuation task, especially on the level of situation model. On the contrary,
there is little alignment effect on linguistic levels.
In foreign language teaching, the method of video-based continuation can be used
to stimulate students' interest, enrich their knowledge, as well as providing them with
opportunities to imagine and reason, triggering their imagination and exercising their
thinking ability. However, it may produce little effect if it is used for learning linguistic
expressions. What’s more, as a traditional teaching method, retelling still has its merits.

Key words: Video-based continuation task, Video-based retelling task, Alignment

effect; Interaction, Input and output
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Contents

Chapter Ⅰ Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1

1.1 Research Background ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1
1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study ---------------------------------------------------------- 2
1.3 Structure of the Dissertation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
Chapter Ⅱ Literature review--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
2.1 Interactive alignment model ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
2.2 Continuation Theory ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.3 Previous empirical studies on effectiveness of continuation theory ------------------------ 5
Chapter Ⅲ Methodology ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8
3.1 Research questions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8
3.2 Participants ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8
3.3 Material----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8
3.4 Writing Tasks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
3.5 Procedure -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
3.6 Data collection procedure ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10
3.7 Audio Recording of Discussions ---------------------------------------------------------------- 11
Chapter Ⅳ Results ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12
4.1 Descriptive statistics for source use variables ----------------------------------------------- 12
4.2 Comparison between groups. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 12
4.3 Summary -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13
Chapter Ⅴ Discussion ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14
Chapter Ⅵ Conclusion, limitations and implications --------------------------------------------------19

Bibliography ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------21
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Chapter Ⅰ Introduction

1.1 Research Background

English is an important subject of higher education in universities in China, which

mainly aims at the acquisition of English language. In order to facilitate students'
effective use of English for communication in their studies, work and social life as well
as meeting the needs of external exchanges, it is particularly necessary to develop
students' English comprehensive application abilities.
It has been widely accepted that the integration of input and output is essential in
second language acquisition. Krashen's (1985) input theory suggested that knowledge
of the target language can only be acquired with a large amount of integrated input.
Swain's (1995) study also found that it was difficult to acquire a second language with
too little output, leading to the output hypothesis. These previous findings have shown
that it is important to design tasks that couple input with output.
In 2012, Wang Chuming proposed the theory of "continuation" as a systematic
strategy to improve the proficiency of foreign language learning. He argued that the
task of continuation stimulates learners' imagination, provides incentives for expression,
and encourages learners to imitate others' expressions in language, which not only
reduces linguistic errors, but also ensures the continuity of interactive content. He,
therefore, proposed a variety of sequential tasks, including different combinations of
listening, reading and writing, which bridge the gap between language input and output,
coupling production with comprehension, providing the conditions for interaction
between learners and source materials, stimulating alignment and helping students to
acquire language. In his view, when students are assigned with the continuation tasks,
they need to firstly interact with the source material and comprehend, and secondly
build situation model and then continue the content. The alignment appears between
learners and source material at the level of situation model and linguistic levels to
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ensure the coherence of the continuation and original materials. So far, many
researchers have conducted empirical studies of written tasks based on continuation
theory, and the theory has been proven to be effective.

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

With the improvement of teaching methods and hardware equipment, English

language teaching is not only limited to paper-based materials, but multimodal input
has also become a common means to promote better immersion in the foreign language
learning environment and also to effectively stimulate students' interests in learning. In
my knowledge, there is no research on the alignment effects based on other forms of
input, such as video-watching. Thus, this study takes retelling writing as a comparative
object and investigates the alignment effects of a video-based continuation task.

1.3 Structure of the Dissertation

The paper consists of six chapters.

Chapter One is an introduction of the dissertation, including the research
background, the purpose and significance of the study.
Chapter Two is literature review. Interactive Alignment Model and Continuation
Theory will be explained in this part.
Chapter Three describes the methodology of the study, including research
questions, participants, material, and procedure of the experiment and data collection.
Chapter Four illustrates the results. The difference in alignment effect between
video-based continuation and retelling tasks.
Chapter Five discusses the results and findings of the research to enrich the whole
analysis.
Chapter Six draws a conclusion of the present study, offers implications and
provides some suggestions for further studies.

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Chapter Ⅱ Literature review

2.1 Studies on Interactive Alignment Model

Pickering & Garrod (2004) emphasized that alignment is the key to a successful
dialogue. To further discover alignment, they proposed alignment is caused through
structural priming mechanism. Speakers tend to use the linguistic expressions that they
have recently encountered, even though these linguistic structures are not familiar to
them. Researches have shown that structure priming take place with different structures
(Costa et al., 2008; Bock, 1986; Cleland & Pickering, 2003).
Alignment takes place at two levels including the level of situation model and level
of linguistic representations. According to Pickering & Garrod (2004), alignment in
dialogue is alignment of situation models. A situation model is a multi-dimensional
representation of the situation under the discussion, ranging from space, time, causality,
intentionality and protagonist. Zwaan and Radvansky (1998) equated construction of
situation models with comprehension of text. In the process of a dialogue, interlocutors
align with each other at situational levels and thus leading to the alignment at linguistic
levels that in turn to promote the understanding of information. Alignment at the level
of situation model and linguistic levels are so closely integrated that they bridge the
comprehension and production in a dialogue.
Thus, they proposed the interactive alignment model to explain how alignment
takes place. Interactive alignment model suggests that interlocutors tend to align their
situational patterns as well as linguistic representations at many levels such as
phonological, syntactic and semantic levels. The interactive alignment process is
automatically triggered in dialogue and alignment at one level promotes alignment at
other levels. The mechanism facilitates the mutual understandings and productions,
making the dialogue keeping going.
Atkinson et al. (2007) conceptualized alignment in second language acquisition
from a broadly sociocognitive perspective. They defined alignment as the means by
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which human beings effect coordinated interaction with other human being and
environments, situations, tools and affordances. Alignments also exist in second
language acquisition when learners come into coordinated interaction with the language
being learned (Atkinson et al., 2007).

2.2 Studies on Continuation Theory

Base on the interactive alignment model, Wang claimed that alignment effect not
only appears in interpersonal interaction, but also occurs between learners and what
they read, hear and watch. He came up with an effective way to promote second
language learning: continuation tasks. Continuation tasks means continuing the content
with its ending removed after comprehending the source material. He believed that
there exists an asymmetry between comprehension and production concerning the use
of linguistic representations (Wang, 2011). When learners read or speak, they can
understand more than they can produce. When they produce yet constrained by their
limited knowledge of linguistic expressions, they are prone to use the representations
they have heard or read before for production. The alignment effect takes place at both
the level of situation model and the linguistic levels. Thus, the weak producing capacity
improves in alignment with the understanding ability (Wang ,2016), which facilitates
the effective second language acquisition.
According to the continuation theory proposed by Wang, different kinds of tasks
can be designed. The critical point lies in the coupling of input with output and
comprehension with production. The input is usually in the form of listening and
reading, while the output is usually in the form of speaking, writing and translating.
Thus, a variety of continuation tasks can be devised, such as audio-based continuation
speech, video-based continuation speech, text-based continuation writing and etc.
(Wang, 2016). In recent years, many of empirical studies concerning the alignment
effect of continuation tasks have been conducted.

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2.3 Previous Empirical Studies on Effectiveness of Continuation

Theory

Wang & Wang (2014) and Wang (2015) found that alignment effects obtained when
reading and writing were coupled in the English continuation tasks, especially at the
level of linguistic representations such as lexical and syntactic ones. More errors were
found when participants performed the Chinese-version task (the input was in Chinese)
than when they did the English-version (the input was in Chinese). The research
confirmed that the interaction between learners and the L2 reading text triggers
alignment and positively influences the use of language. Similar results were found for
learners who set Chinese as a second language.
By examining the proportion of T-units borrowed from the original text in students'
compositions, Wang (2020) found that the text-based writing with point-of-view
changes task facilitated more interaction and alignment between learners and the
original text than the continuation task, both at the situation model level and at the
linguistic levels. Gebril & Plakans’ (2016) study shows that borrowing vocabulary from
the original text led to a significant increase in the lexical diversity of academic essays.
They found that essays that scored higher on the TOEFL test had a greater extent of
overlap with the content of the original text. They classified the content borrowed from
the original as explicit or implicit source use. The former ones are borrowings that are
the same in both linguistic forms and meanings, while the latter ones are what they
summarize or paraphrase from the content of the original text. Jiang & Tu (2016)
examined the effectiveness of the continuation task on L2 vocabulary learning. Their
research shows that continuation task significantly outperforms summary task in terms
of the accuracy and complexity of L2 vocabulary.
The importance of reading back was demonstrated in Xiong's (2018) study, in
which learners with reading materials had more significant alignment at lexical level
and phrasal level than those without reading materials when they did continuation task
coupling reading with argumentative writing. And there was little difference in errors
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of linguistic forms between two tasks.

Wang & Wang (2019) experimentally examined the effectiveness of continuation
task on acquisition of English relative clauses. They found that continuation tasks led
to a significant increase in the proportion of relative clauses in learners' production,
demonstrating that continuation task can effectively facilitate the learning of complex
syntactic structures. Zhang (2016) found that continuation that coupling reading and
writing had significant effects on students' text features such as vocabulary, syntactic
structure and discourse coherence in their compositions.
Miao (2017) found that there is alignment effect in L2 writing at the discourse level.
And the alignment effect is significantly influenced with internal and external contexts,
character perception, and language input.
Zhang & Zhang (2017) compared the alignment and language error frequency in
the continuation tasks based on narration and argumentation, suggesting that the genre
of the original materials has an impact on the alignment effect of continuation tasks.
Wang & Cao's (2020) study shows that advanced second language speakers had
significantly higher structure initiative in the continuation task than intermediate level
speakers. By comparing the two groups of second language learners including one
group wrote continuation after reading text and the other group wrote compositions
with given topics, Jiang & Chen (2015) found that continuation performed better in
terms of accuracy and complexity than writing without reading. However, there was no
significant difference in terms of fluency.
From the preceding discussion, it can be seen that continuation tasks can effectively
trigger alignment effect since it closely integrate comprehension with production and
force learners interact with source materials, especially continuation tasks coupling
reading with writing.
With the development of multimedia technology and the varieties of foreign
language teaching methods, audio-visual has become a common way in the classroom.
According to the Continuation Theory, continuation coupling listening with writing
should also have multiple advantages as we discussed above. Several researchers have
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already carried out empirical studies on this form.

Zhang, Wu & Zhang (2019) investigated the differences in the effectiveness on
lexical acquisition between text-based continuation task and audio-based continuation
task. Results showed that the latter one has significant advantages over the former one.
And the effectiveness varies depending on learners’ language proficiency.
Hu's (2018) study shows that appropriate use of multimodal input such as video
and audio led to an effective improvement in students' listening comprehension. Tang
(2020) found that compared with text, the richer input from videos was beneficial to
students' acquisition of language knowledge and improved their interest in learning.
Wang (2018) compared the alignment effects of text-based continuation tasks and
video-based continuation tasks at three linguistic levels: lexical level, phrasal level and
sentential level. the results show that alignment effect was more significant in the text-
based continuation task than that in video-based continuation task at the lexical and
phrasal levels. However, there was no significant difference at the sentential level.
The studies above show that rich input modalities provide more linguistic structures
and contextual information to be used, leading to a further increase in learners'
understanding of the source material. Thus, significant alignment effects occur at both
the level of linguistic representation and situation model level.
There are nearly few researches emphasizing on the other forms of input in written
tasks such as video. Therefore, the present study strives to compare video-based
continuation tasks and video-based retelling tasks for investigating which one can better
trigger alignment effects.

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Chapter Ⅲ Methodology

3.1 Research Questions

This research is implemented to answer the following questions:

(1) Would the video-based continuation tasks better facilitate the interaction
between learners and the source material and thus creating more significant alignment
effects at the level of linguistic representations than that of the video-based retelling
tasks?
(2) Would the video-based continuation tasks better facilitate the interaction
between learners and the source material and thus creating more significant alignment
effects at the level of situation model than that of the video-based retelling tasks?

3.2 Participants

Thirty students who were sophomore English majors from an English department
at a Chinese university participated in this study. They had learned English for at least
7 years at the time of the investigation.

3.3 Material

The video material used for the experiment was the first 23 minutes of Once
Removed, episode 3 of the fourth season of the British black comedy Inside No.9,
written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, narrating a serial murder case in a
house that is for sale. The plot of this set adopts the method of flashback and part of the
plot is implicit, so logical reasoning is needed to clarify the plot development. The
elements of suspense also increase the interestingness of the source materials.

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3.4 Writing Tasks

The 30 participants will be randomly divided into 10 groups, with five groups
selected at random as the group for video-based continuation task and the other five
groups for the video-based retelling task.
After the two groups watched the video material with its end removed, they were
asked to discuss before completing their own written tasks. The video-based
continuation group was assigned to add an end of the narrative and the video-based
retelling group was assigned to retell the story in chronological order. Both two tasks
were required to have at least 150 words in English.

3.5 Procedure

This study was conducted at a college english viewing, listenging and speaking
class and was carried forward by the teacher. the tasks were assigned at the beginning
of the class.
(1) A video viewing session lasting approximately 50 minutes. The two groups
watched the video material together, during which the teacher paused each time the plot
switched and helped the participants analyze what had been shown in English.
(2) Discussion session, lasting approximately 10 minutes. Each group will discuss
in English and the discussion will be recorded with the computer recorder.
(3) A writing task session lasting about 30 minutes. Learners in the continuation
group were asked to add an ending to the story based on the discussion and the video
material and to present it in written form. The other group, on the basis of the
audiovisual material and the discussion, were asked to analyze the timeline of the story,
to retell the story in chronological order, and to present it in written form. Both tasks
required a minimum of 150 words.

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3.6 Data Collection Procedure

Given that a sentence may contain multiple independent clauses and the meaning
of each independent clause may not be closely connected, the present study used T-
units as the unit for counting the alignment between the participants' compositions and
the source material. T-unit is defined as the smallest possible grammatical unit that
could stand alone, for example, an independent clause or an independent clause plus its

dependent clause（Plakans & Gebril, 2004）.

Considering that alignment at different levels may affect different aspects of

language use, for example, alignment at the linguistic level is mainly reflected in the
use of linguistic forms, while alignment at the level of situation model may only be
reflected in the meaning (Wang & Wang, 2014). All the textual borrowing were divided
into three categories: verbatim source use (the borrowing of exact wording of the source
materials), full implicit source use and partial implicit source use (paraphrasing or
summarizing in different degrees) (Plakans & Gebril, 2004). Verbatim source use
embodies the alignment at the level of linguistic representations and situation model
level while implicit source use embodies the alignment at the level of situation model.
In order to clearly distinguish full implicit source use and partial ones, the present study
adopted the seven basic clause types in English on the basis of the linear order of
constituents proposed by Yang (2005, P.101), which are illustrated in the following
Table 3.6.

Table 3.6 Seven Basic Clause Types in English (Yang, 2005)

Type S V O C A
SV Someone was laughing
SVO My sister enjoys parties
SVC They bacame angry
SVA I went to New York
SVOO Mary gave John a book
SVOC Most people consider the book expensive
SVOA You must put the toy downstairs
Note: S=Subject, V=Verb, O=Object, C=Complement, A=Averbial

A full implicit source use means all the components of the sentence are identical in
meaning to the source material; a partial implicit source use means the main
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components (i.e. subject and verb) are identical in meaning to the source material, yet
the object, complement or adverbial are incorrect or omitted.
The following example is extracted from the participant’s continuation writing.
The original sentence in the source material: Charles and I are moving to Portugal.
Verbatim source use: Natasha told her father: ‘Charles and I are moving to
Portugal.
Full implicit source use: Natasha would move to Portugal with Charles.
Partial implicit source use: Natasha wants to leave here to make fresh start.
The proportion of T-units borrowed explicitly, borrowed implicitly in full meaning
and borrowed implicitly in partial meaning in each writing will be counted separately
for data analysis. The statistical tool SPSS was employed for data analysis to examine
the differences between the video-based continuation task and the video-based retelling
task through the independent sample Mann Whitney U test.

3.7 Audio Recording of Discussions

The discussion of every group was recorded to provide a better interpretation of

the findings through qualitative analysis.

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Chapter Ⅳ Results

4.1 Descriptive Statistics for Source Use Variables

Table 4.1 Proportion of T-units of Four Types of Source Use in the Two Tasks (%)
Video-based continuation writing Video-based retelling writing
M=1.32 M=4.14
Verbatim source use
SD=2.884 SD=5.266
M=11.83 M=1.9
Partial implicit source use
SD=4.912 SD=3.694
M=13.90 M=90.61
Full implicit source use
SD=6.451 SD=8.062
M=25.75 M=92.51
implicit source use
SD=6.935 SD=8.312

Figure 4.1 Proportion of T-units of Four Types of Source Use in the Two Tasks (%)
140

120

100

80
92.51

60 90.61

40

20
1.9 25.75
4.14 1.32 11.83 13.9
0
Verbatim source use Partial implicit source use Full implicit source use Implicit source use

Video-based continuation writing Video-based retelling writing

4.2 Comparison between Groups

There was no significant difference in the proportion of T-units that contain

verbatim source uses between the video-based continuation group and the video-based
retelling group (p=0.161), and both were very low, indicating that the alignment effect
of both tasks at the level of linguistic representations was not significant.
The proportion of T-units that contain implicit source use was significantly lower
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in the video-based continuation group than in the video-based retelling group (p=0.000),
suggesting that the alignment effect of the video-based continuation task at the situation
model level was significantly lower. Similarly, the proportion of T-units that contain
full implicit source use was significantly lower in the video-based continuation group.
However, more partial implicit source uses were found in the video-based continuation
task(p=0.000).

4.3 Summary

(1) There was no significant difference in the alignment effect between the video-
based continuation and video-based retelling tasks at the level of linguistic
representations, and both were very low.
(2) Both tasks triggered alignment between the learners and the source material ai
the level of situation model. The alignment effect of the video-based continuation task
was significantly lower than that of the video-based retelling task at situation model
level.

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Chapter Ⅴ Discussion

5.1 Both tasks generated alignment at the level of situation model.

Firstly, verbatim source use and a certain degree of implicit source use took place
in the two tasks, suggesting that both tasks can trigger alignment effect at the level of
situation model. The source material is obviously a narration with strong taste of
suspense. The writings of both groups contain a number of expressions with suspense
style, such as "a gang of drug dealers", "elope with", " tetramine", "murderer", etc. It
shows that some participants unconsciously imitated the style of the source material
when completing the writings. Some of the participants cited other suspense stories in
the course of their discussion, indicating that the suspense style of the source material
had a strong impact on them, attracting the participants to get immersed in the story and
building the situation model, which triggered alignment effect at the level of situation
model.
What is more, video material integrates images and sound effects, providing
participants with a strong sense of immersion. It allows learners to interact with the
source material from various aspects such as space, time, causality, intentionality and
protagonist, which enhances alignment effect objectively.
At the level of the situation model, both the video-based continuation task and the
video-based retelling task triggered alignment effect between learners and the source
material to some extent.

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5.2 Why the total implicit source use was less in the continuation task

while more partial implicit source use was found in it than that in the

retelling task?

The reason why overall proportion of implicit source use in the retelling task was
significantly higher than that in the continuation task lies in the different requirements
of the two tasks. The retelling group was asked to analyze the plot of the material from
a chronological order. So, there was bound to be a lot of borrowing from the source
material. While the continuation task was using imagination and reasonable inference
to complete the story with its ending removed. Thus, the proportion of implicit source
use was relatively less.
The recordings of the participants' discussions may explain the reason.
Firstly, the time distribution was different between the two tasks. The continuation
group tended to spend most of their time on reasoning, imagining and continuing the
story. They search for key details based on an understanding of the plot and identify
unknown character relationships and motives for the murder in order to continue the
story. Most of the content of their writings were creations on their own, which is hardly
relevant to the source content. Whereas, the retelling group could spend almost all of
their time reviewing the source material with their notes and retelling the story. Since
the main plot of the story is relatively simple -the killer enters the house and murders
the three main characters who appeared in succession in different ways, and is killed
eventually- the retelling team just needs to discuss the timeline and retell it in
chronological order. What they should do is to summarize and paraphrase. The
assignment for the continuation group is relatively difficult, with more specific tasks to
be completed in the same amount of time than for the retelling group, and therefore the
time is much limited for them.
Secondly, although continuation groups mentioned the source content in
discussions, they did not necessarily use it in the writings since the continuation part

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was more important for their task. As observed from the discussion recordings, learners
in continuation group tended to trace to the source when they encountered some vague
information such as the definite relationship between the characters and the motive of
the murders. The source content only acted as the basis of their reasoning and
continuation. So, much of them did not appear in their writings.
Let’s take the discussion of a group in the continuation task as an example. At the
beginning of the discussion, the group members raised some undefined questions about
the main characters.
In response to the unspecified character relationships, they recalled the details in
the source material and made possible assumptions. At the same time, the group also
made possible logical reasoning and conjectures about motives and intentions from the
plot, such as the purpose of the appearance of the play's character, Lady May. In
addition, there were also instances where the group created a setting and cause for the
story. The group spent the majority of their time on continuing the story, and rarely
borrowed the content of the source material in their writing tasks.
It is evident that the continuation group usually discussed in a question-
retrospection-assumption-confirmation format. In the process, some of the source
content were borrowed for continuing and reasoning, resulting in more partial implicit
source use. While the retelling group, on the other hand, has a more direct discussion,
resulting in more full implicit source use. They reorganized the plot according to the
timeline, trying to retell them as completely and accurately as possible. In this process,
a great deal of the content of the source material was borrowed, resulting in a large
number of full implicit source use; some of the implicit source use that took place in
the retelling task when they made incorrect or inaccurate borrowings.
Thus, the two tasks also produced contrasting proportions of partial and full
implicit source use.

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5.3 Why there was no significant difference in the proportion of

verbatim source use between the two tasks and both were at very low

levels?

Firstly, the input modality constrained the participants from reading back, which
objectively reduced the occurrence of structural priming. As a result, there was little
verbatim source use for either task. Secondly, the textual form of the video material is
similar to a script. Most content of a script is verbal descriptions, especially the
conversations between characters, and there are basically few textual descriptions of
the environment and actions. Therefore, in most situations, participants could not
directly borrow from the source text. What is more, the internal logic behind the
characters’ act may not be well expressed through exact word-for-word borrowing of
sentences or the production with the same meaning. Thus, there is few verbatim source
use in both tasks.
Secondly, due to the requirements of the writing task and limited working memory
capacity, participants needed to pay more attention to the meanings of the content rather
than emphasis on linguistic structures, resulting in few verbatim source use.
Working memory capacity was first applied to linguistic research in the 1960s. It
refers to the memory and cognitive systems in which we use both short-term and long-
term memory to store, retrieve and control information (Baddeley, A., & Hitch, G.,
1974). Working memory has a limited capacity. In complex tasks, only a rational
allocation of cognitive resources can achieve the desired effect (Just & Carpenter 1992).
When participants were faced with complex writing tasks, they focused more on the
logic of the source content and the rationality of the continuation writings because of
the limited working memory capacity. Therefore, there is higher proportion of implicit
source use than verbatim source use in both tasks.

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5.4 Learner Factors

From the perspective of learning strategies, learners' logical reasoning ability

cannot be ignored. The elementary education in China emphasizes memory, knowledge
accumulation and application ability. Systematic logic education is often ignored. It can
be expected that the vast majority of students do not have appropriate reasoning
methods. They do not review the previous content and take source materials as the basis
for reasoning and imagination.

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Chapter Ⅵ Conclusion, limitations and Implications

According to the results of this study, both video-based continuation and retelling
trigger interaction between learners and the source material and produce alignment
effect. Due to the characteristics of the video input modality and the requirements of
the writing tasks, the alignment effect is particularly significant at the level of situation
model, especially that of video-based retelling task, while being little at the level of
linguistic form.
The present study investigates the alignment effect of written tasks only based on
narrative video source. Whether there will be more significant alignment effect when
the source materials are argumentative videos such as lectures and debates can be
further investigated. Learners may borrow more viewpoints, arguments from these
materials to develop their arguments or refutations, causing more textual borrowing.
The number of participants in this study was small, focusing on sophomore English
majors, and the experiment period was short. A follow-up study with a larger sample
and more introspective data would probably have better results.
This study only investigates the alignment effect of the video-based continuation
and retelling tasks. Whether the alignment effect has a positive effect on second
language acquisition needs to be verified by long-term research.
In teaching of foreign language, the method of video-based continuation can be
used to stimulate students' interest, enrich their knowledge as well as providing them
with opportunities to imagine and reason, triggering their imagination and exercising
their thinking ability. However, it may produce little effect if it is used for learning
linguistic expressions.
The use of this method in teaching requires attention to several points. Firstly, due
to the complexity of the continuation task, students should be given sufficient time to
carry out the task. Secondly, during the continuation task, teachers should consciously
guide students to review the previous text. Reasoning and imagination should be based

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on the content and key details of the source material. Teachers can encourage students
to borrow, imitate, and create appropriate expressions and other linguistic structures.
What’s more, as a traditional teaching method, retelling still has its merits.

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