An Empirical Study On Using Recitation Input In English Writing Teaching & Learning For Non-English Majors

The research is conducted to investigate whether recitation input is effective to improvenon-English majors' English writing ability in our country.Writing ability is a very important part of students' comprehensive English ability.Nowadays, however, owing to the effect of examination direction, little attention is paid tomaking a systematic writing syllabus for non-English majors nor to the input of targetlanguage, for which there exist serious problems about quality and quantity. Excepttextbooks, what students are exposed to are only some model writings; topics for practiceare nothing but several examination-oriented ones. Generally, materials in the textbookcannot meet the requirements of all students with different tastes and different levels ofproficiency; furthermore, both the content and language used in some articles aresomewhat out-of-date. Some so-called model writings are nothing but rough and slipshodproducts. All of these lead to the severe insufficiency of language input for students, hencetheir unsatisfactory writing ability, for example, substandard and inadequate writing output,meanwhile seriously affected by their mother tongue. Transfer of mother tongue, inparticular the negative transfer, which involves many aspects-from word choice, grammar,and sentence structures to thinking mode, has great influence on English writings ofChinese students. Much practice has to be done to increase students' language input andovercome the negative transfer of mother tongue. Recitation, concluded by the author fromthe theory and her experiment, is a very effective way to provide such opportunities forpractice.As a traditional approach for language teaching and learning, recitation is powerfullysupported by series of theoretical foundations. The author first applies Krashen's optimalinput hypothesis^â…±, which presents in detail that the optimal input should be comprehensible,interesting and / or relevant, not grammatically sequenced and in sufficient quantity; what's more, the input should not put the students on the defensive otherwise high affective filterwill greatly impede their language learning. Criteria of selecting materials for recitation^â…²and flexible application of these materials in practice determine that the characteristics ofrecitation input are similar to those of optimal input. The teacher first provides enoughmaterials to guarantee the quantity. Students make choices according to their own realabilities or tastes; therefore, the input material wouldn't become a threat to them.Grammatical items are not emphasized since the main purpose is on meaning not on form.Thus, all the factors contribute to the availability of the optimal input to students.Secondly, in addition to the inadequacy of optimal input that should be responsible forstudents' unpleasant writing ability, the different thought pattern resulting from thediscrepancy of cultural and educational background is also a main cause. It is impossible tocompletely eliminate the influence from Chinese thinking mode, but it can be reduced tosome extent with a suitable way. One component of Confucian thinking on education,which remains influential today, is the worship of the authority of printed text. Books areconsidered as embodiment of knowledge, wisdom and truth. Therefore, those who canlearn the classic by heart and frequently cite them in their own writing are considered wiseand learned and their writings powerful in persuasion. Recitation becomes a traditionalstudy way for Chinese students that they are very familiar with. While in western education,initiative and creativity are preferable; more attention is paid to the objectivity andcredibility in students' writing. Too much citation would be looked at as lack ofcreativeness and the writer will be considered as following sheep or too lazy in using theirown mind.Thirdly, the author does her research from the angle of memory-one of the essentialconcepts in cognitive psychology. First and foremost, language is more memory-based innature and use than is often realized. Obviously, recitation is closely related to memorybecause recitation is based on memory and conversely contributes to training andreinforcing memory and as well promoting the internalization of language knowledge from declarative to procedural or explicit to implicit. With accumulation of internalizedlanguage knowledge, students' linguistic sense will gradually be strengthened and naturallythey would apply the target language with proficiency. Besides, with recitation, studentswould memorize language knowledge in the form of chunk not the trifle words, which alsocontributes to accelerating the automaticalization of the target language knowledge.In the experiment, the subject group is required to recite almost everyday and recitation isone of the formal parts of English lessons. First, materials are carefully selected. Duringthe course, students are to complete regulated reciting tasks; in addition to assigned writing,they are to write freely in the form of journal or diary every week. Their performance indoing the assignment will be regularly checked. The control group is not required to recitein the first semester while in the second semester, significance of recitation and someinteresting recitation materials are specially introduced to them, but they are still notrequired in particular to recite. The experiment lasted for one academic year. The resultsshow that students of subject class achieved much better score than those of control classin the final examination in both semesters; in CET Band Four, the pass rate in experimentalclass is more than 10% higher than that in control class. Finally the author also mentionssome factors that affect the accuracy of the experiment.Thus, by means of theoretical research, empirical investigation, it is proved that recitationis quite efficient to improve students' English writing ability. Therefore, the author holdsthat it is necessary to apply recitation input to the improvement of non-English major'swriting ability. It also suggests that some traditional teaching & learning methods, whichare still effective today, should not be abandoned carelessly while introducing new theoriesand approaches of teaching & learning from the Western.