An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Reciting And Writing From Memory On Middle School English Teaching

Reciting strategy has been accepted by most of the linguists as an efficient English learning method and research in this field has been mature and systematic. But, writing from memory strategy has not yet captured sufficient attention in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the researches combining reciting and writing from memory are relatively few.Through relentless research of many years’ teaching, the author has explored and found a set of simple and practical teaching method, which can be applied to the middle school English teaching.Guided by Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis and Frequency Hypothesis, the thesis puts the emphasis on illustrating the specific steps of the reciting and writing from memory (RWM) teaching method:intensive teaching--reciting--writing from memory--dictating--testing--correcting. Each of the six steps can’t be omitted, its core being the combination of reciting and writing from memory. This method emphasizes the importance of writing from memory after reciting. The thesis is aimed to make an effective experiment on the effects of this teaching method, including two tests, two questionnaires and an interview.As for a student-oriented teaching method, it emphatically elaborates the effects of input on output and by means of a complete and repeated process of language input and output, the students’abilities of listening, speaking, reading and especially writing have been greatly enhanced. The teaching effects are completely different owing to the adoption of this good method.The thesis aims to answer the following four specific research questions:①How does the RWM teaching method affect students’ comprehensive English?②How does the RWM teaching method affect students’ written English?③What are students’ attitudes towards the RWM teaching method?④What’s the relationship between students’ English scores and the degree of approbation of the RWM teaching method?The62subjects are all ninth-grade students who will take part in the2013Senior Middle school Entrance Examination. The time span of the experiment is from January,2013to June,2013, over a period of22weeks.They are divided into experimental class and controlled class. The author requires the students from the experimental class to recite texts and write from memory after class and regularly checks their recitation in class. While the controlled class is just taught in the same way as the experimental class, only writing from memory is not included. The reciting material is selected from New Concept English Book2.After relevant experimental statistical data analysis of the pretests and the posttests including the scores from the tests and the data from the two questionnaires by SPSS19and an interview, the experiment came to the following conclusions:1) The RWM teaching method is effective in middle school English teaching, enabling students to foster their overall levels of using English language.2) Students who have received the RWM teaching method perform better in written English than those who haven’t received the RWM method.3) Students in the experimental class accept the RWM teaching method and are satisfied with the teaching effects.4) The more the students accept the RWM method, the more likely they will have higher scores.This thesis aims to share teaching experience with fellow teachers and focuses on how to better understand and grasp the teaching method in English teaching and learning from the viewpoints of both teachers and students. This empirical study has enriched research achievements in the middle school English teaching and has enlarged the range of the research on reciting and writing from memory. In learning English, a scientific method is an important premise for the students to improve their grades and enhance their learning efficiency. Therefore, this study may have some positive effects on further improving the teaching quality in middle school in future.