An Empirical Study On The Effectiveness Of Chunk Recitation On Senior Middle School Students’ English Writing

Writing is important in English teaching of senior middle schools as well as in NMET.However, for most students, English writing is boring and tough. The author’s teachingpractice indicates that even the students of higher competence only can ensure lessgrammatical mistakes in their compositions but appropriateness and fluency are far fromsatisfactory. As for those of poorer foundation, it’s hard to express themselves in English orcomplete an English writing task.Chunk recitation is considered to be an important way to improve the situation. By recitingenough fixed phrases, daily communicating polite formula as well as lexicalized sentencesthat they learn in daily study, students keep storing chunks in mind to increase input oflanguage materials and improve their sense of language thus ensuring fluency andappropriateness in language output.Based on chunk theory, this thesis aims to explore the effects of chunk recitation onimproving senior middle school students’ writing proficiency by means of an empiricalresearch. It aims to solve the following questions:(1) What difficulties do students in senior middle schools have in English writing?(2) Does chunk recitation help students in senior middle schools overcome their difficultiesin English writing?(3)Does chunk recitation model help enhance students’ confidence and sense ofaccomplishment in English writing as well as English learning?112students from Jinan Licheng No4middle school participated in the teaching researchwhich lasted8months altogether. Class A (61students) is the experimental group and ClassB(51students) is the comparison group. The two classes are at the same level on the whole inclass performance, exam scores and writing proficiency. The two classes’ gap of averagescores in exams is less than2points. Before the experiment, a questionnaire and an interviewwere carried out in both the two classes to know the present situation, attitudes anddifficulties of students’ English writing and a pre-test was carried out in both the two classesat the same time as well. During the teaching experiment, the chunk recitation model wasapplied in Class A while the routine teaching model was used in Class B. After theexperiment, another questionnaire and interview were carried out in Class A to know thestudents’ attitudes towards the chunk recitation model. Also, a post-test was made in both Class A and class B at the same time. The results of questionnaires and interviews showthat most students considered writing very important in English learning but held negativeattitudes towards their own writing performance before the experiment. After the experiment,most students admit chunk recitation model played an important part in their progress inEnglish writing. They say the enlargement of vocabulary and the improvement of languagesense as a result of memorizing enough language chunks help them become more confidentin not only English writing but also the other aspects of English learning. The results of thewriting tests indicate that after the experiment, students in Class A made greater progressthan students in Class B. Students in Class A used more chunks in their writing and performbetter in fluency and appropriateness in their writing compared with students in Class B.Based on the experiment, a conclusion can be drawn that chunk recitation enhancesstudents’ English writing proficiency and chunk recitation model is effective in Englishwriting teaching.The structure of the thesis is as follows: Chapter One Introduction introduces the background,goals and significance of the thesis. Chapter Two Literature Review introduces researches onrecitation, language chunks and English writing teaching at home and abroad. Chapter ThreeTheoretical Basis introduces the definition and classification of chunks, the advantages ofchunk model and the theory of language input and output. Chapter Four ResearchMethodology includes research questions, research subjects, research instruments, theprocedure of the experiment, data collection and one sample of chunk recitation teachingmodel. Chapter Five Data Analysis and Results Discussion analyzes the results of the twoquestionnaires, two interviews, pre-test and post-test. Chapter Six Conclusion discusses themajor findings, implications and limitations of the research as well as suggestions for furtherresearch.