An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Texts Recitation And Classics Recitation On The Development Of High School Students’ English Writing

English writing is an important and difficult part in English language teaching.Recitation is a traditional learning method, which can effectively enhance thestudents’ sense of language, reduce their first language negative transfer in theirwriting output, and further improve their overall writing proficiency.The present study is conducted between Class2and Class5covering111subjectsin Grade Two, Cenxi Middle School. In Class2, ten texts are taken from SeniorEnglish for China (Students’ Book2B) for the students to recite. While in Class5,ten classics are selected by the teacher for the students to recite. Based on the secondlanguage acquisition theories, the present study examines the actual efficacy of textsrecitation and classics recitation on the development of high school students’ Englishwriting by statistical analysis of pre-test compositions, post-test compositions, as wellas a questionnaire survey. The data reveal that texts recitation and classics recitationare obviously helpful for high school students’ overall writing proficiency; bothrecitation practice can facilitate the students’ English writing on fluency, grammar,vocabulary, content, and mechanics; classics recitation is more effective than textsrecitation in developing the students’ English writing, especially in improving thestudents’ fluency of English writing. Data analysis of the questionnaire survey showsthat most of the students hold positive attitude towards recitation practice. Recitationcan help the students develop a sense of language and bring the improvement ofaccuracy, fluency and gracefulness in the students’ English writing; the memorizationof words, chunks and sentence structures can help the students notice how to make thesentences in a graceful and attractive way.The present study has provided some pedagogical implications for high schoolEnglish teaching. First, more recitation activities are needed for the students,especially classics recitation to improve their language learning. Second, the veryessence of Chinese traditional teaching methods, such as recitation, can be made fulluse of in EFL teaching to facilitate the development of Chinese high school students’English proficiency. Finally, teachers should encourage and help students to put whatthey have recited into actual use of the language in a flexible and integrated wayrather than in a mechanical way so as to achieve the final goal of language learning.