An Experiment Study Of Passage Recitation Practice On The Development Of Students’ English Writing Proficiency

From the perspective of English teaching practice, writing teaching has long been a weak point of junior high school English teaching in China. Chinese students, who are limited to the natural language environment, are short of enough English input. So they lack vocabulary, and there are many Chinglish expressions in their writing. Many English teaching researchers and experts believe that recitation is a good way to learn English efficiently. It can stress language input effectively, cultivate students’language sense, strengthen their competence of language organization, and inspire their writing motivation, thus promote their writing level. However, empirical studies on recitation used in English writing are quite few, and specific study on recitation used in Junior high school English writing is even fewer.In view of this situation, the author of this thesis intends to make a further research to find out whether passage recitation can help Chinese junior high school students improve their writing proficiency. The present research made a literature review on Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis, as well as the results of recent empirical studies both abroad and domestic as its basis. Under the theoretical basis of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Swain’s Output, the author presented three research questions:(1) Is recitation an effective way to improve students’English writing proficiency?(2) Does the recitation make students reduce their spelling mistakes and improve their ability of using English words?(3) Does recitation have anything to do with the change of students’attitude toward their English writing?An experiment study was conducted in a junior school from Guangzhou. The students were from two parallel classes which acted as Experiment Class (EC) and Control Class (CC). Both EC and CC have received the same normal lectures and writing instructions during the18-week experiment. The only difference between the EC and CC is that during the experimental semester, the subjects from EC should complete a recitation assignment every week. Before the experiment, a pre-test of English writing is held to ensure that there is no significant difference in the English writing competence between the two groups. After the experiment, a post-test is done. The author carried out a post-experiment questionnaire and an interview in order to have a deep understanding of the effects of reciting on learners’ writing performance. The statistical tools Independent Samples T-test and Paired Samples T-test by SPSS12.0are employed for the quantitative data analysis.The results of the research demonstrate that recitation proves to be able to help students improve their writing level, reduce spelling mistakes and improve the ability of using vocabularies correctly. It is revealed from the questionnaire and interview that most of the students hold a positive attitude toward recitation and English writing. The present research is worth generalizing. Passage recitation can be an effective way in English learning. Further studies on reciting methods should be conducted in order to maximize the effectiveness of recitation in English writing teaching and learning.