The Effect Of The "Recitation-imitation" Method On College English Major Learners' English Writing Ability

In the college English for English majors,writing is a more difficult skill than listening, speaking and reading, which is also the weakest link in English teaching. The proficiency of one's English writing directly reflects the level of his /her level of English learning. How to develop English Writing has been a hot and difficult topic in the current researches. This study has done much to investigate the main difficulties in college students'English composition. Lots of literature, related theories, and experiments about English writing have also been studied thoroughly. This thesis is an experimental study of the effect of the"recitation-imitation"method on the college English major learners'writing based on the theories of the second language acquisition and psycholinguistics. Related hypotheses were tested through a teaching experiment and a questionnaire.The following specific questions are addressed in this study:â‘ Can the"recitation-imitation"method help Chinese college students improve English writing ability?â‘¡Does the"recitation-imitation"method work significantly better than a non-method in the students'writing ability?â‘¢What are the students'attitudes and opinions about the"recitation-imitation"method?Accordingly, the following hypotheses are put forward in this thesis:â‘ The"recitation-imitation"method can improve English writing for English majors. There is a positive relationship between them.â‘¡There is significant difference between the scores of the four groups after they undertake a way of"recitation-imitation"and the non-method one.â‘¢The students in G1 have positive attitudes towards the"recitation-imitation"method.In the experiment conducted in this study, 120 English major freshmen of Chongqing Normal University have participated as subjects, who have been divided into four groups, one (30) as recitation-imitation group (G1), one (30) as recitation group (G2), one (30) as imitation group (G3), and one (30) as normal group (G4). With the"recitation-imitation"method, the students in G1 were asked to recite the given material and write a similar composition according to the model structure. Through 7 writing assignments, all the scores have been recorded for analysis. In G2, students only recited, and students in G3 only imitated, while in the normal group (G4), the traditional method of teaching writing was conducted.To investigate the effect of the"recitation-imitation"method, the students'writing examination results of a pretest and a posttest were collected. All the collected data were analyzed with the statistical instruments from SPSS 11.5. In the end, a questionnaire was employed to survey the subjects'attitudes and opinions about the"recitation-imitation"method. The analysis of the One-way ANOVA test results suggested that the"recitation-imitation"method had certain influences on English writing, for the scores of G1 were higher than those of the non-method group. Meanwhile, the scores of the recitation group were also higher than the natural group. At the same time, results of the questionnaire suggested that the method was well received by the students.Although this research has some limitation and insufficiency due to the limitations in sample size, class hours, the researcher's ability and others, it still provides pedagogic implications for improving college English writing teaching for English majors of the Chinese EFL students. It is hoped that enough concern could be raised to improve the level of English writing.