| Recitation, a traditional commonly used mode of teaching, had been considered effective for years. Yet nowadays when English teachers develop too many new teaching methods such as task-based approach, communicative approach, recitation, as a traditional method of teaching, has been gradually ignored in college English teaching. However, with the ever increasing researches on memetics, many scholars have regained fresh enthusiasm on the roles of recitation in the language teaching and learning.Memetics is a new theory based on Darwin's theory of evolution, trying to explain the rules of cultural evolution. While in the linguistic field, memetic theory is mainly embodied in the spread and replication of language memes such as vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and sentence patterns, etc.The present research tries to apply memetic theory to college English teaching with the purpose of testifying to the hypothesis whether the traditional teaching mode "recitation", being ignored for many years, is still feasible and effective in modern language teaching and learning. The researcher chose 15 subjects from two classes which are taught by the same English teacher in Beijing Forestry University. By means of interventional research, the researcher trained the subjects with reciting strategies and instructed them to use reciting materials properly in practice, trying to find whether their English level improved or not.After 14 weeks'interventional study, the results showed that both the subjects'reciting performance and English level improved, and that these two factors they were significantly correlated, showing that, recitation, as a traditional teaching method, has positive effects on students'English learning and it is a good complementary implement to English teaching. Hopefully, the present study will, to some extent, remind college English teachers and learners in their ESL teaching and learning of the importance of the traditional language teaching and learning method. |
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