Effects Of Different Recitation Methods On Seventh Graders’ Mastery Of English Text Content

This study was carried out to explore the effects of different recitation methods on seventh graders’ mastery of the English text content,to be specific,the effects of different recitation methods on their short-term mastery,long-term mastery and retention of their mastery of the English text content.Its theoretical foundations are Involvement Load Hypothesis,Memory Theory,Depth of Processing Theory and Schema Theory.Its significance lies in three aspects:to enrich the current research on recitation,to gain insight into seventh graders’ mastery of the English text content through different recitation methods and to improve the effectiveness of their recitation.The three research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1.Which method is more effective,guided recitation or rote recitation in terms of the short-term mastery of English text content?2.Which method is more effective,guided recitation or rote recitation in terms of the long-term mastery of English text content?3.To what extent can short-term mastery of English text content be retained in the long-term mastery of English text content in terms of the two recitation methods?This study included an experiment and an interview at a junior high school in Suzhou.Before the experiment,the mid-term test was used as a pretest to find out that there was no significant difference(P=.906>.05)between the two classes.There were altogether 80 seventh graders,with similar learning experiences in the study.The instrument employed in the experiment was the test,where there were twenty blanks to fill in with 5 points for each blank.The treatment consisted of four steps:grasping the title;identifying the topic sentences and the key words;finding out the connections between the sentences;and writing the key words during the recitation.The data were collected by the researcher through conducting and scoring the tests.The data analysis involved Independent-samples t-test to compare the effects of different recitation methods on their mastery of the English text content Six students were interviewed with two high achievers,two middle achievers and two low achievers.The instrument was an interview schedule concerning the reasons for the effectiveness of guided recitation.The data collection involved transcription and C-to-E translation of recorded interview.The data were analyzed in terms of classification and comparison.The three major findings yielded from the study are as follows:First.in terms of the short-term mastery of the English text content,both the guided recitation and the rote recitation have effects on their mastery,which indicates the effectiveness of the two recitation methods.In spite of this,the Experimental Class do a little better than the Control Class with their means 84.75 and 79.38 respectively,but there is no significant difference between them(P=.064>.05).That can be attributed to a certain role the teacher’s guidance plays,thus producing a little better effect.Second,in terms of the long-term mastery of the English text content,the Experimental Class perform better than the Control Class with the former mean,70.63 and the latter mean,61.50.And there is a significant difference between them(P=.034<.05).That might be due to the students’ writing of the key words during the recitation for it might make a deeper impression than the mere rote memory.In addition,guided recitation emphasizes the key words,the topic sentences and their connections that might help them remember a little longer.Third,the retention rate of the Experimental Class is higher than that of the Control Class with the former retention rate 83.34%and the latter retention rate,77.48%.This is consistent with the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve that people tend to forget their newly learned knowledge quickly if they don’t review the learned material consciously.Moreover,that might be attributed to the students’ deeper impression of the guided recitation,especially the writing of the key words during the recitation.This study provides some pedagogical implications.Firstly,the guided recitation and the rote recitation can be both feasible for students’mastery of English text content.One thing to note is that no matter which recitation method the students choose,they should attempt to establish relationships between the new information and knowledge and previously acquired knowledge and experience,which is beneficial to their effective recitation and better mastery of the text content.Moreover,processing the text content at a deep level also plays a key role during recitation cause the deeper the processing depth is,the better the impact of memory retention will be.By the effective guided recitation or the rote recitation,the students are capable of mastering the text content and achieve language input.Secondly,to help the students understand and remember exactly what the text says,the teacher needs to explain the grammar,meaning and so on in detail.Then,it’s better to conduct the guided recitation.After that,the effective language input can be achieved and the sensory memory can be transferred into the short-term memory.Besides,writing down some key words during recitation to shift the short-term memory into the long-term memory is also effective for the students’mastery of the English text content.Thirdly,repetition and revision in the recitation process should be emphasized at the same time due to the imbalance of the process of forgetting.It’s crucial for the students to keep repeating and revising so that they can create new forgetting curves especially at the beginning of their learning process.The more they review,the more they can turn the short-term memory into their own long-term memory.And everyone’s memory is unique,which urges us to discover our own memory curve according to the different characteristics of each person and adopt a better recitation method,thus continuously improving the efficiency of English text content mastering and even English learning.There are two main limitations in the study.Firstly,the size of the samples is not large enough,which can’t reflect the daily teaching reality very well and can’t be generalized to other study.Secondly,the study is not long enough to ensure its long effects,which needs to be further tested in the future.