An Empirical Study On Recitation Used In Improving Oral English Proficiency In A Rural Junior High School

With the development of economy,the international communication increases rapidly.The high level of oral English is also required when you apply for a job.Recently,the oral English teaching in junior high school has been put into great reform.New teaching methods appear like bamboos in spring.Unfortunately,spoken English teaching has always been a weak part in English teaching and the students' English speaking ability is not good enough,especially in rural areas.Due to the insufficient multimedia teaching equipments,it's difficult to create a friendly language learning environment.Therefore,junior middle school students in rural areas just have limited language input and grasp limited English skills,especially limited oral English proficiency.English Curriculum Standards(2011 version)ask for students between 12-14 years old to be equipped with the ability of exchanging ideas with others and expressing their own opinions on a simple topic in daily life.Changsha,the capital city of Hunan Province,will carry out an oral English test in 2015.This will absolutely be a big challenge for rural students.The writer believes that recitation might be one of the most suitable and quickest ways to improve oral proficiency for learners in rural areas.Although the scholars at home and abroad studied a lot on recitation,the researches are mainly for college and senior high school students,little for junior high school students in rural areas.This paper takes Memetics,Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis as theoretical bases.It includes both qualitative and quantitative studies,such as oral English test,questionnaire and experiment.This study tries to answer two questions:1.Can recitation improve the accuracy and fluency of rural junior students' English oral proficiency?2.How can teachers apply recitation to helping junior high school students of rural area to promote their oral English proficiency?The findings show that recitation can help the rural Junior High school students improve their accuracy and fluency of spoken English.By breaking through the difficulties of pronunciation before reciting with the help of the teacher,the students overcame the psychological barriers and became more confident and courageous.In the process of recitation,the teacher required the students to recite by following the rules of forgetting curve,which help the students find a way to memorize effectively.Also,teacher's supervision and inspection after recitation promoted the autonomy of the learners in the rural junior high school.There are still some limitations of this research,e.g.the small number of participants,ignorance of the gender factor,and the short time of the experiment.Future research can focus on how to design recitation materials and oral English teaching activities.In the long run,recitation can help junior high school students in rural areas to promote their oral English proficiency.