Recitation-Input In The Teaching Of English Writing For Senior High School Students

Writing is a complex cognitive activity and an important standard to measurestudents’ language ability. As the important aspect of language teaching, writing teaching isalso a difficult part in senior high school English teaching.“The English LanguageCurriculum Standard for Senior High School” demands that students should equip withability of language organization and logical thinking as well as competence of languagecommunication. However, the writing ability of students in senior high school is farbeyond satisfaction.This dissertation, based on Krashen’s input hypothesis, Schmidt’ noticing hypothesis andinformation-process theory as well as Bialystok’ implicit and explicit knowledge, studiesthe application of recitation input theory to English writing teaching. In the experiment,students are given key parts of text book such as vocabulary, sentence patterns andparagraphs to memorize; meanwhile, relevant materials the same with the topics of textbook such as vocabularies, phrases, sentences and model essays are asked to recite ascomplement. In this way, students can improve their writing ability by vocabularyaccumulation, English knowledge consolidation, and sense of English cultivation.This thesis analyzes the current situation of senior high school English writing teaching,summarizes the writing teaching modes, reviews the background and development ofrecitation input theory, testifies the effectiveness and feasibility of recitation input teachingmethod in senior high school and proposes suggestions to future study. This study is acombination of quantitative and qualitative study. The experiment lasted17weeks, twoclasses were chosen as experimental class which adopted recitation input approach andcontrol class which adopted traditional teaching approach. Through questionnaires, theanalysis of scores of pre-test and post-test of two classes, and analysis of vocabulary usedin post-test compositions, together with an interview for experimental class, this study aimsto answer the following research questions:1. Is the recitation input teaching approach helpful in changing the students’ attitudestowards writing? If so, do the most students have a positive attitude towards recitationinput?2. Can recitation input teaching approach improve the students’ writing proficiency inGrade One of senior high school?3. Does the recitation input teaching approach make students reduce spelling mistakesand improve their ability of application of English words?Based on the research study, the results show that:1. The results of questionnaires and the interview for experimental class show after application of recitation input teaching approach, most students have more interest andpositive attitude towards English writing; most students show positive attitude towardrecitation input and they believe they can improve their writing proficiency throughrecitation.2. Through the quantitative study on scores of compositions of both experimentalclass and control class, we found that the post-test in experimental class is obviouslyhigher than those of control class. So we can conclude that the recitation input teachingmethod can facilitate the students’ writing proficiency.3. The contrastive analysis of post-test score between experimental class and controlclass reveals the recitation input teaching approach does well in word spelling, diversity ofthe words and the use of the conjunctions.Above findings show that recitation input teaching method can change students’attitude in English writing, stimulate students’ interest and facilitate students’ writingproficiency. Therefore, it is feasible to be implemented in senior high school Englishwriting, which illustrates that recitation input teaching method is much more effective thantraditional teaching method.