TITLE:
Exploration of College English Writing Teaching Mode Based on the “Continuation Theory”
AUTHORS:
Wentao Guo, Mengqi Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Continuation Theory, Alignment Effect, Language Teaching
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.16 No.1,
February
25,
2026
ABSTRACT: “Continuation Theory”, an innovative language learning framework rooted in the “alignment effect”, leverages incomplete discourse within contextualized settings to prompt learners to produce creative completions. This theory has gained growing recognition and pedagogical adoption among Chinese scholars; one of its direct applications lies in advancing second language (L2) acquisition and enhancing the efficiency of L2 instruction. This paper centers on the “reading-then-writing” approach, aiming to explore a novel college English writing pedagogy guided by Continuation Theory. Through empirical experimentation, this study demonstrates that, in application-oriented universities, strengthening the synergistic interplay between instructional materials, teaching methodologies, and teachers’ multi-tiered scaffolding can optimize the efficacy of reading-then-writing tasks—ultimately elevating the accuracy and linguistic sophistication of students’ written output.