Attaching Importance To The Input Of Recitation In Middle School English Writing

There commonly exists a phenomenon of negative transfer of Chinese in our students' English writing. Grammar, vocabulary, and expression are marked by the interference of Chinese which greatly impedes the improvement of the students' writing communicative competence. This is mainly due to the inadequacy of the students' language input. In view of the present situation, this paper attempts to explore the important role that the input of recitation plays in getting rid of the interference and the negative transfer.This study is inspired by the intention to figure out effective and feasible writing learning strategies for senior high school students in China. There's no shortage of researches on the validity of writing learning strategies in the second language acquisition. However, recitation, a traditional method of literacy learning still widely practiced in China received very few investigations. In view of this, the paper made a tentative study to explore its efficiency in improving writing proficiency by applying it into the writing learning of high school students.Specifically, in this paper, the research is undertaken with the main focus on answering the general question as to the role of such a traditional literacy practice as recitation may play in contemporary literacy education.In terms of research methodology, this research includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, such as literature review, interview and experimental study. By means of reviewing related writing development theories and recent empirical studies both abroad and domestic, the paper presents a conceptual understanding of the research question and a holistic picture of writing development study. The experiment lasting two terms was designed and carried out specifically for research question: what effect recitation has on high school students' writing proficiency. The results demonstrate that recitation helps lay a solid foundation for learners' further development in language written performance, and has a place in today's English teaching in China, therefore, recitation can be implemented during high school English learning as an important element in the teachers' instruction package.In addition, it is revealed from the interview that most of the students hold a positive attitude toward recitation. They think recitation is a good effective but painful strategy to practice written English.Like all empirical studies, this study suffered from limitations though it was designed carefully. Firstly, data collection techniques are needed to get more accurate information. Secondly, the sample under investigation is relatively small; moreover, the reliability and validity of the test papers used in this study need confirming. Considering the above limitations, therefore, most of the results obtained in present study are left to be improved and it is hoped that further research will lead to more overall and accurate results.