Action Research On The Effects Of Graduated Dictation Based On Recitation On Junior High School Students' English Writing Ability

Junior high school students are requested by English Curriculum Standard to be able to write a topic-based article according to the picture or text information provided. In actual writing, the author finds that many students do not have enough topic-related vocabulary and can‘t use learned sentence structures to express what they want to say properly, and sometimes, some of the sentences they write down are full of grammar mistakes and often appear as Chinglish. In view of this situation, the author intends to make a research to find out whether graduated dictation based on recitation can help Chinese junior high school students improve their writing performance.The research made a literature review on relevant recent empirical studies both at home and abroad and has Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis and Cognitive Information Processing Theory as the theoretical bases to put forward the following research questions:1). Does graduated dictation based on recitation help students improve their English writing performance?2). Which aspect of English writing has been improved most significantly?An action research was conducted in a class of 50 students from Grade Nine in a junior middle school in Shantou and lasted fifteen weeks. There were two rounds of recitation and dictation training of graduated difficulty in this research. In round one, a pretest was carried out and group interviews were implemented for preliminary investigation, and the students were trained for ten weeks of recitation with a view to improve their accumulation of some topic-related words and phrases, sentences structures and passage structure. At the same time, graduated dictations were carried out during the research to check their recitation from easy to more difficult levels. That is, students had a dictation of topic-related words and phrases, sentences structures which were selected from the sample composition for the students in every first week of the round, and a dictation of sample composition in every second week of the round and so on. After that, a mid-test and another group interview were carried out of which the results were collected and analyzed for the author‘s reflections on the training process and effects. In round two, the training which lasted for five weeks aimed at helping students pay more attention to reciting some topic compositions from topic-related words and phrases, to sentences structures and to passage structure gradually by helping students analyze sample composition before recitation. Graduated dictations were carried out during the research to check their recitation from easy to more difficult levels. And then the author carried out a post test and another group interview and made reflections.Paired Samples T- tests processed by SPSS1 9.0 are used for the data analysis of pre-test and mid-test, mid-test and post-test, pre-test and post-test between group comparisons.The results of the research demonstrate that graduated dictation based on recitation can help students improve their writing performance, and content among other dimensions of writing abilities like language use and organization was increased most significantly. For the group interviews, most of the students hold a positive attitude toward graduated dictation based on recitation and its positive influence on English writing. Thus we may have the following implications summarized: Graduated dictation based on recitation can be an effective way in English writing teaching and learning, traditional methods may generate amazing results if used innovatively to cater to learners‘ needs; Front-line teachers should be empowered to try on renewed approaches to testify the practicality of theories or formulate their own hypotheses out of evidence-based action research. Further studies on recitation and dictation be conducted to maximize the effectiveness in English writing teaching and learning.