Application Of Retelling To English Reading And Writing Teaching In Senior Middle School

Teaching English as a foreign language has been studied by many linguists and educators. In our country, many language teaching theories were introduced and several English teaching reforms were undergone during the comparably short period of English teaching practice. In recent years, English educators have developed a keen interest in communicative method and task-based method and try to abandon the traditional inefficient English teaching. People pay more attention to class activities and advocate the whole language approach in which integrative language tasks or activities involving all the four language skills are designed. As a matter of fact, most English teachers in China are not practicing the theory and still hold on the traditional lecture method, especially in rural and senior middle school due to the limitation of teaching condition and weighty teaching task, which results in unsatisfying teaching result.What is more, the traditional reciting method in junior middle school is not suitable to senior middle school, and the new syllabus has attached much importance to students' communicative ability as well as higher requirement of reading and writing proficiency in senior English teaching. Under this background of teaching reform and in light of the English teaching situation in our country, retelling activity may be a good teaching technique and an alternative to rote memory since so many linguists think highly of it.This paper is determined to explore the effect of application of retelling to senior English reading and writing, trying to prove it to be an effective way to improve English teaching. So the following research questions are proposed: 1. Can retelling improve English reading performance of senior middle school students? What effect does it have on students'answering direct questions and indirect questions respectively in reading comprehension?2. Can retelling improve English writing performance of senior middle school students? What effect does it have on language, organization and content aspects respectively?3. What attitude do students have toward this technique?4. What retelling materials and forms do learners prefer to use?This research combined quantitative and qualitative method. First the study adopted an almost three-and-a-half-month experimental method between the experimental class, Class 81 and the control class, Class 80, aiming at exploring whether retelling has a positive effect on English reading and writing learning of students in senior middle school and the exact effect it has on specific aspects of reading and writing respectively. In addition, three questionnaires were designed to supplement this research. Finally, all the data were collected and then were given either quantitative or qualitative analysis.The result indicates students in experimental class have made much more progress in reading comprehension than control class. As for writing it also shows students in experimental class have made greater progress especially in language and content aspects than control class. Although other aspects in experimental class are better than control class, they don't reach significant level. Most students have a positive attitude toward retelling. They like fictional retelling materials and prefer role-play retelling method.