The Effect Of Recitation On NMET Cloze For English Poor Students

It is commonly accepted that reading is a very important and basic part of Englishlearning. The foreign language teaching focuses on relationship between language input andreading for a long period, so does our country. According to the Ordinary Senior MiddleSchool English Curriculum Standards(experimental manuscript), the task in this period is tomake the students master some basic English knowledge including listening, speaking,reading and writing, and develop the students’ integrating skills to use foreign language.However, reading comprehension is the worst part in the national matriculation English test,especially the cloze. It is one of the most difficult parts to the English learners.Cloze has been used in a variety of large-scale English tests. National MatriculationEnglish Test (NMET) is generally supposed to be an effective examination to test thestudents’ comprehensive English competence. In this test, cloze is the most workable part.Because its high validity in testing from the aspects of vocabulary, grammar and discourse, itis also called “reading comprehension with obstacles”. That is why majority of studentsconsider cloze is the most difficult test to deal with. As a consequence, it’s hard for thestudents to get a high mark. Cloze drills are often ignored by students, which results in theinefficiency of cloze. How to change the situation in cloze is one of the main problems thatEnglish teachers have to consider in senior middle school. Hoping to find a way to improvestudents’ English ability, a lot of English teachers pay much attention to the cloze.Based on the second language acquisition theories, the aim of this paper is to examinethe effect of recitation to the improvement of cloze ability for senior middle school poorstudents through pre-tests of cloze, post-tests of cloze, recitation test, recitation reports, andobservation.By the means of theoretical analysis and experimental proving, the thesis firstsummarizes the features of cloze and the main contents of discourse analysis. Then itdescribes how to carry out the teaching method of recitation in senior school English class.The subjects in the experiment are students of grade two in Baoding No.7Senior Middle School. The results show that the students’ skills of problem-solving can be greatly improvedwhen teachers use the recitation strategies. These strategies can cultivate the students’concept of discourse and build their confidence in English study. Moreover, recitationstrategies will help students to get better scores in the cloze test. So it is worthwhile applyingthe recitation method in senior English class. In spite of the positive achievements, there is aroom for the research to be improved and perfected in the future.The study provides important implication for the teaching of English cloze test to seniormiddle school poor students. We should positively maintain the very essence of ourtraditional teaching methods and make full use of the recitation input in the teaching ofEnglish studying in an effort to facilitate the development of high school students’ Englishstudying.The study reveals that recitation input is helpful for poor students in senior middleschools to know more about English language, and to enhance the confidence in learningEnglish. What’s more, it is helpful to acquire and reinforce the vocabulary and formulaicchunks that are needed in finishing cloze item. It can further improve students’ overall clozeproficiency.