The Application Of Recitation Input To Vocational English Writing

There were a lot of spelling, grammatical mistakes and Chinglish errors in vocational school students'English writings, and most students cannot make full use of what they have learned owing to their low English proficiency, limited learning strategies and inappropriate learning habits. This is mainly due to the inadequacy of the students' language input. Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to give students more language input and sufficient relevant practices in order to enhance students'language input and overcome the negative transfer of mother tongue. This study aims to apply the traditional teaching method, essay recitation, to English writing so as to improve their English writing skills.This research includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, such as interview and experimental study. By means of experiments and interviews, the paper presents the effect of essay recitation on improving students' writing ability. The one-year experiment selected 89 students in two classes as subjects During the whole study, the validity of essay recitation was particularly emphasized to insure the reliability of the experiment, such as flexible ways to supervise the process of recitation, different means to develop students' interest in recitation, etc. Two English writing tests and two comprehensive English proficiency tests were conducted. All the data were processed with SPSS 13.0. The results of the data show that the scores of both English writing and comprehensive English proficiency tests in experimental class were higher than those of reference class. Besides, this study indicates the influence of gender difference on effect of writing output in experimental class:girls'scores were apparently higher than boys'owing to girls'good habits of essay recitation. In addition, it was revealed from the interview that most of the students hold a positive attitude toward essay recitation. They thought recitation was a very effective but painful strategy to practice written English. Therefore, essay recitation is efficient and feasible to improve the quality of input language and promote the vocational school students'writing proficiency.