The Effects Of Recitation On Output Of Beginning Korean Learners Of Chinese

Recitation from memory represents one of the more traditional approaches of foreignlanguage learning. Though its relative simplicity has contributed to its widespread acceptance,recitation is now often perceived as an outdated form of “rote” learning and hence undervaluedby teachers. In fact, recitation accords well with the “input–absorb-output” model of foreignlanguage acquisition. In order to complete a recitation, learners must repeat the “input” stage,then focus attention on information storage, then maintain it in memory until they “output” in thetarget language. Thus we believe recitation to be an effective approach for beginning learners ofChinese.In this study, we asked12participants to complete3recitation tasks (involving a total of27sentences), and afterwards observed and analyzed the change in reading speed, mastery ofsentence structures, and writing composition among beginning Korean learners of Chinese.After a month of experimentation, we reached the following conclusions:1. Recitation increased the reading speed of beginning Korean learners of Chinese.2. Common errors do exist in the task of writing sentence structures, though inconsistenciesin the questions themselves led to discrepancies in proportions of each type of errors: we foundthat errors of omission and misordering were the most common.3. Recitation had a positive effect on the mastery of sentence structures of beginningKorean learners of Chinese.4. Recitation was effective in promoting the correct usage of adverbs in beginning Koreanlearners of Chinese.5. Recitation caused beginning learners to write longer compositions, with more diversevocabulary and sentence structures. This research is based on practical teaching experiments, in particular the analysis of theeffect of recitation on the output of beginning learners of Chinese. It expands and deepens ourpresent understanding of Chinese output among non-native learners, with a particular practicalvalue for such learning among Korean high schoolers. With its limited sample size and scale,these results represent only an exploratory endeavor, and more research is obviously needed todeepen our knowledge in this particular area.