| This study was undertaken to investigate and compare effects of text retelling and text recitation on senior two students’ writing quality in terms of organization, grammar and diction. An experiment was conducted on the basis of a theoretic framework which incorporates Krashen’s Input Hypothesis (1982;1985), Swain’s Output Hypothesis (1985;1995) and the Constructivism (Vygotsky,1962;1978).The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1. Is there any difference between the effects of text retelling and text recitation on senior two students’ writing in terms of organization? If any, to what extent?2. Is there any difference between the effects of text retelling and text recitation on senior two students’ writing in terms of grammar? If any, to what extent?3. Is there any difference between the effects of text retelling and text recitation on senior two students’writing in terms of diction? If any, to what extent?The subjects in this study were88students in senior two in Nantong Tian Xinghu High School, which is a four-star full-time high school in the city of Nantong. The instruments employed in this study were two writing tests which were both chosen from NMET (National Matriculation English Test). Before and after the experiment, writing tasks were distributed, which would serve as pre-test and post-test in this research. All the data in this study, including compositions in the two writing tests, were collected by the researcher. Data analysis consisted of three steps:scoring, calculation and comparison. Firstly, all the compositions of the two tests were scored by the researcher and her intern mentor Mrs. W with the same analytic rating rubric which was a revised version of English writing rating rubric of NMET. The rating rubric mainly includes three key rating categories-organization (10marks), grammar (8marks) and diction (7marks), in total25marks. Secondly, the software of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)17.0was used to calculate and analyze all writing scores. Independent samples T-test was employed to compare students’writing performance in the pre-test and paired-samples T-test was applied to analyze writing quality in terms of organization, grammar and diction with the mean values and SD values. Finally, these statistics were used to compare effects of text retelling with recitation on students’writing quality.The major findings from this study are as follows:Firstly, compared with text recitation, text retelling is a more efficient way to improve students’ writing quality in terms of organization. Quantitatively, students’ writing mean value in terms of organization in the retelling class (hereinafter referred to as Classl) improved by0.814 with the significant level at.000. Qualitatively, students could express main information with better organization of ideas and use paragraphs more accurately in an orderly way. Students in the recitation class (hereinafter referred to as Class2) on the other hand did not show similar progress in their writing in terms of organization, with the significant level at.060. This is felt to be attributable to the lack of emphasis placed on organization of texts in recitation.Secondly, compared with text retelling, text recitation has greater positive effect on students" writing quality in terms of grammar. Quantitatively, students’ writing mean value in terms of grammar in the Class2improved by0.822with the significant level at.000. Qualitatively, students made fewer mistakes in grammar and expressed more grammatically to make the whole writing coherent in the post-test. As for the students in the Classl, their writing mean value in terms of grammar also improved at.000. Different from students’ writing in the Class2. students in the Class1used more complicated sentences and expressions in their writing, because of which, they made relatively more mistakes and their mistakes were not corrected in time.In addition, both text retelling and text recitation improved students" writing quality in terms of diction, even though retelling did a little better. For one thing, students in the Classl tended to consciously use their own words to retell texts. They reproduced new texts through paraphrasing and sentence modification so that they performed actively in diction. For another, students in the Class2focused on memorization of original texts, including words and phrases, instead of thinking more. So their choice for words tended to show less variety but with fewer spelling errors.This study has three limitations. Firstly, the number and scope of samples employed in this study is felt to be not large enough to represent the whole student population. Secondly, the duration of the experiment is not long enough, especially for text retelling. Thirdly, because of the prior teaching plans for this semester, the experiment was conducted in the moming class every week instead of in normal English classes. In view of this, results need testing and verifying in further studies. |
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