The Application Of Recitation Input To Non-English Majors' Writing

Theories and researches home and abroad show that the learners can learn target knowledge, accumulate implicit knowledge and get rid of negative transfer of mother tongue through recitation. Therefore, recitation plays an important role in English teaching even in the modern society. And recitation has the special significance for non-English majors in English learning under the Chinese environment. In the college English teaching, writing is a more difficult skill which is also a weak aspect. There are many researches concerning English writing but few based on recitation input. This thesis attempts to explore the influence of recitation input on non-English majors writing on the basis of theory of second language acquisition.Based on the Krashen's Input Hypothesis, the author aims to test the feasibility of recitation input in improving non-English majors writing by carrying out a teaching experiment. The hypothesis is proposed before the beginning of the experiment: recitation input contributes to improving students' writing and students receiving recitation training perform better than those without the training.The subjects are 104 non-English major freshmen from Linyi Normal University. The students in the experiment are randomly assigned to Experiment Group (EG) and Control Group (CG). T-tests by SPSS 12.0 are used to make an overall check of the writing performance both between and across EG and CG to carry out the statistical analysis. Moreover, in order to obtain further information to explain why and how students in EG improve their writing , a semi-open interview is employed to make a specific descriptive analysis on influence of recitation input on improving writing. Pretest writing reveals students in EG and CG do not differ significantly, but they do differ significantly at the end of the study. Students in EG receiving training of recitation input make higher scores and produce much better compositions than those in CG who are taught according to the traditional teaching method. Generally speaking, results of t-tests and interview altogether demonstrate convincingly that instructions about recitation in non-English majors' writing class facilitate students' progress in their writing. Therefore, the hypothesis that recitation input can contribute to improving writing ability is confirmed. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is about current situation in English writing and the significance of the study. Chapter Two is the theoretical framework which includes Krashen's Input Hypothesis, optimal input and relevant researches on recitation. Chapter Three is the experiment which includes research questions, subjects , instruments and research procedures. Chapter Four is the process of analyzing the experiment which will test the influence of recitation input on non-English majors writing. And the author gives some implications inferred from the major findings in Chapter Five. Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis.It is concluded from the experiment that recitation input in English writing is both theoretically and practically feasible. In addition, the results of this study turn out to be inspiring and constructive in English teaching and learning. However, there are still some limitations, for it is a tentative study and the small sample size as well, to some extent, limits of the generalization of the findings. Therefore, further study is needed in the future...