A Case Study On Model Recitation And Imitation In English Writing Teaching Of Students In Grade Three Senior High School

In our country, English composition is taking the proportion of 17%in the college entrance English examination and it reflects high school students’ comprehensive ability of English. In the stage of practice, the author saw the low level of students’ writing ability. Indeed, the students couldn’t understand and use the words, phrases that they have learned in an appropriate way. The main reason is lacking of language input.According to the input and output theory of second language acquisition,the input is the foundation of the output. To improve the level of the composition, students’ must rely on a lot of practice of language input.Recitation is a traditional teaching and learning method that has been used in China, learners recite poems since childhood. As the old saying in China said, “Be familiar with the 300 poems Tang Dynasty, even you can’t write a poem, you can recite one.” In this paper, according to the characteristics of the high school students Grade three and the common ground of Chinese and English, the author put forward the strategy of"model text recitation and imitation”, trying to apply this traditional Chinese leaning method on senior English writing teaching by the training of language input and output practice. This paper aims at findinga way to improve the students’ English writing ability.The subjects are fifteen senior high school students in class 149,Grade Three of Shiji School in Xue Jiawan town. The research questions include,(1) Can the students’ English writing ability be improved with the application of recitation and imitation in the English Writing teaching?(2) Can the application of recitation and imitation help to improve the students’ study motivation?(3)Can the application of recitation and imitation on the English Writing teaching help students have more positive attitude in the process of English learning?In the course of the study, the phrase, sentence and model text recitation and imitation were organized according to the degree of difficulty. The students completed an essay every day by the way of model text recitation and imitation in the eight weeks’ experiment.Finally, the author did the analysis through the questionnaire and the test respectively and combined with the student diary and interview. Data was collected and analyzed by SPSS 19.0. The result shows that the method of model text reciting and imitating is effective. The analysis of questionnaire and the interview shows that the students’ interest in writing and the writing attitude have become more positive than before,and the students have more confidence in English writing.In conclusion, model text recitation and imitation has a positive effect on improving students’ English writing, and lay good foundation for the language output, especially writing. Students adhere to the practice of model text recitation and imitation, which is an effective and feasible method to improve their English writing ability in high school.