A Study On The Effect Of Recitation On High School Students’ EFL Learning

This study is inspired by the intention to figure out effective English learningstrategies for high school students in China. The significance of English learning andteaching strategies cannot be denied when English is regarded as one of the3compulsorysubjects in high school. However, very few investigations on recitation-the traditionallearning strategy have been done. So in this paper, the author made a tentative study toexplore the effects of comprehensible recitation on high school students’ EFL learning.More specifically, it attempts to analyze the effects of comprehensible recitation on thethree basic language skills-listening, reading and writing.Totally280students from Grade one in Yun Cheng Senior High School wereselected as subjects. The control group were composed of Class301and302including140students. While the experimental group were composed of class303and304alsocontaining140students.This study was carried out in Yun Cheng senior high school duringthe spring semester and fall semester of the2010-2011academic year. Students inexperimental group were asked to recite the English texts which they had learned the daybefore at6:30to7:30every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Students in control groupalso had to attend the morning reading class the same day and at the same time. But theywere not required to recite the texts. All the subjects had to take a pre-test and post-testbefore and after the treatment. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS13.0in order tosee whether there were statistical differences between the two groups. In order to makesure those test papers had higher validity and reliability, they were designed by severalfamous teachers in Yun Cheng and were used in mid-term and final-term test. During thetreatment, a questionnaire were carried out in the experimental group to examine whetherthe attitudes the students held toward this strategy influence the results of the experiment.It was found that students’ English scores have greatly improved in experimentalgroup in comparison with the control group. The results demonstrated that recitation didhelp high school students’ EFL learning and it played an important role in English teachingin China. Through examining the results of listening, reading and writing, the author found out that the influences of comprehensible recitation on listening were not as obvious aswhat it has on reading and writing. It was revealed from the questionnaire that a greatnumber of the students in the experiment held a positive attitude toward recitation in whichmany of them improved their English scores. They viewed recitation as an effectivestrategy but painful. It was recommended that students in high school should do somecomprehensible textbook recitation in EFL learning. The importance of comprehensiblerecitation cannot be denied.