Native speakers, do you need to recite anything growing up

Gettysburg Address and Statue of Liberty Plaque Edit: Not helpful for language learning because it's kind of archaic language

Other than the Pledge of Allegiance and a bunch of prayers, no.

The alphabet, the quadratic formula, the pledge of allegiance (until high school)

Not for language learning specifically, no. You'd read passages in class and stuff, but that was more for you to demonstrate you could actually, like, read. Did it passively help build your pronunciation? Yes, of course, but most of that was just coming from its own classes or just existing around people speaking the language. Anecdotally, I knew a few kids in school who *did* have to do extra little lessons (mostly in elementary school) about reading aloud and stuff, but AFAIK this was if you were exceptionally falling behind or else had some kind of speech impedement. For second language learning though, absolutely read aloud, it helps a lot.

In the U.S., since World War II and especially since [*Abington Schools v. Shrempp*](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/school_district_of_abington_township_pennsylvania_v_schempp_(1963)), the only thing most students recite on a regular basis in schools will be the [Pledge of Allegiance](https://www.legion.org/advocacy/flag-advocacy/the-pledge-of-allegiance) to the flag. Students in private school or homeschool might not, and the extent to which a public school can require it has been [tested in court cases](https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-latest-controversy-about-under-god-in-the-pledge-of-allegiance) through the years, but almost everyone knows the words. If by recite you mean you're expected to memorize it and perform it at least once, then there aren't really any universal texts. Every state, every school, every teacher has different expectations. Some common texts to learn include the [Preamble to the U.S. Constitution](https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/us-constitution-preamble) and the [Gettysburg Address](https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/exhibits/online-exhibits/gettysburg-address-everett-copy/), which are both short. It's common in English literature classes to be asked to memorize some famous poems or monologues, in whole or in part, such as Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("[Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day)") or any number of his other poems or soliloquys, "[The Tyger](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger)" by William Blake, "[The Raven](https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/ravent.htm)" by Edgar Allen Poe, "[Ozymandias](https://poets.org/poem/ozymandias)" by Shelley, or any of countless works by the likes of Milton, Keats, Coleridge, Burns, Emily Dickinson, Whitman, Eliot, Kipling, down to Robert Frost and many, many others. There is really no national standard for such things. My 7th grade literature teacher had the class memorize "[The Charge of the Light Brigade](https://poetrysociety.org.uk/uncategorized/hollie-mcnish-the-charge-of-the-light-brigade-by-alfred-lord-tennyson)" by Tennyson which we then performed for the school, on what seems entirely like a whim—she at one point mentioned watching a movie about the historical event the poem is about—as no class before or after us was given this assignment. As a Boy Scout, we recited the [Scout Oath and the Scout Law](https://www.scouting.org/about/faq/question10/) at the start of every meeting, and I imagine the Girl Scouts would do the same, but most students aren't members of either movement. Likewise, if your family is religious, you will almost certainly memorize prayers of varying lengths; having a devout mom and a Catholic education, I can recite at least a dozen prayers from memory.

Teachers would make students take turns reading aloud from the textbooks or novels in English class, but rarely if ever are there set things everyone has to recite.

They made us do some of this in school, but I and all my classmates knew the language fluently already. It wasn’t part of learning the language.

I had to memorize and recite a Shakespeare sonnet in high school. Not really to learn the language, it was just when we were studying Shakespeare.

My 9th grade English teacher had us memorize and recite a list of prepositions in alphabetical order. I can still remember it!

UK 🇬🇧 We sang in school choirs. One piece was Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' set to music. 45 years later I can still recite it.

We learned the 23 helping verbs in 7th grade English class... Am is are were was be being been have has had do does did can could shall should will would may might must.

In elementary school, yes, we read out loud as part of learning to read. Did it help with fluency? Maybe by teaching new vocabulary, but by that age every student was as fluent as one would expect a young child to be. In my school, our teachers took a strong focus on teaching children to read well. As an adult in college (university), I was amazed at how poorly other (native-speaker!) students read aloud. They sounded like 7 year-olds learning to sound out words. If you ever feel discouraged in your English studies, just remember: you probably sound better than a *lot* of adult native speakers.

Preamble to the Constitution, some poetry and Shakespeare were all required in my school.

*Miniver Cheevy* and *Nothing Gold Can Stay*

You might want to look up the Pimsleur method. It's from the 70s and is basically that. I would suggest looking up its weaknesses as well.

Tour the States! It was optional in 5th grade, but I did it anyways.

We had presentations in class about 2 times a year starting around the age of ten. They were usually not for the sake of learning the language, but to present other things we had learned. For example I recall doing presentations on Miami, the biomes of Alaska, conquistadors, Atlanta, and several books, in elementary school.

We had to learn all the states and capitols. We had to memorize poetry in HS. We had to memorize exerts of literature and recite it in front of class. I still hate street car named desire because of that! And of course as children a lot of our learning was thru songs we sung daily.

Alphabet. I before E except after C and when it sounds like A like in neighbor and weigh. Pledge of allegiance. Lefty loosey, righty righty.

I have to say the months in my head everytime i write the date because i cant remember what number each month is. Thats as close as i get.

I think people are getting thrown off by the word "recite". You're using it correctly, but I don't think people are interpreting the context correctly. While recital of things like The Pledge of Allegiance is incredibly common in US schools, we also often read aloud from whatever book or story the class was working through that day. One student would read a few paragraphs, then another would take over. If the class was going over a play, each student would get a part to read. Acting ability never came into it. I remember reading the part of Giles when we did The Crucible in highschool. It was an optional class in highschool, but if you go into university, you may be required to take a public speaking or speech class. There is where we would recite famous speeches or documents and sometimes have to write and recite our own.

(UK, 1980s, private school) the poem we most often had to recite with Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I  wouldn't really recommend it to most intermediate English learners because most of the words in it are nonsense (made up) - but for someone who likes linguistics it could be interesting, because of the way it uses the rules of English grammar and syntax in the placement and structure of these made up words. It could  be used as an exercise for the more advanced student with a high aptitude for language learning, by asking what part of speech different words in it are. Although you have never seen the word, it can be obvious from the placement and structure, if you have a good eye for these things. Culturally, a couple of the most useful ones to know have already been mentioned, Ozymandias and The Charge Of The Light Brigade. If you are going to be reading broadsheet newspapers or classic literature, you will run into imagery or (modified) lines from these poems.  References to some of Robert Burns’ classic poems (esp To a Mouse, Auld Lang Syne) can also be found in the UK broadsheet press , though the spelling and pronunciation will be tricky unless you already have a particular interest in Scots

American perspective, and nothing really. The Pledge of Allegiance was technically a thing, but for nearly all my schooling career it was before class started, often like 15 minutes before, just to say they did it, so in practice it wasn't actually a thing. The closest thing I can think of of having to recite something was sometimes we'd have vocabulary assignments where you would have to memorize a list of vocabulary words, and then someone would be randomly chosen to remember the words (or maybe it was on a rotation? That seems more plausible for grading, but I feel like I remember it being random, so you didn't know if you'd be the one chosen each time), and give a short definition for each, but we didn't have to memorize a specific definition (in your own words was fine), nor did you have to list out the words in a specified order.

Nursery rhymes and tongue twisters. Basic little songs like twinkle twinkle little star were pretty common as well.

In 9th grade our biology teacher had us memorize the last sentence of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

We read out loud in school when I was growing up, but not memorization or recitation specifically. I was a weird kid who enjoyed memorizing and reciting poetry as a kind of DIY speech therapy for my stutter.

One English teacher would expect us to memorise and recite poetry and the occasional Shakespeare soliloquy. I can still rattle off most of them 50 odd years later.

Not in basic English classes, no. But many of the literature classes I took required something. I can still rattle off passages from Chaucer and Shakespeare almost 25 years later.

Everybody does this in school at some point, but it's not really a language *learning* exercise most of the time. It's a good exercise nonetheless. (What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin, if we are mark'd to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor....)

I remember needing to memorize the preamble to the constitution when I was 14. I did not memorize the preamble. I failed the assignment.

We had to recite things, but it wasn't to learn the language, it was usually to develop memory skills.

Here in Britain we don’t recite things as such, but school kids age 4-7 or thereabouts do get pulled into a side room occasionally to read a book out loud to their teaching assistant

Not really, using the language was the way that most of us learned. It's not going to be far off for you, immersion is going to be the way to go.

The times table, up to 12 times 12 is 144.

We had to memorize the prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet. Neither of these would be in the least helpful for learning the language, as they are both archaic.

To give a non-American perspective on this, since so many people are in here saying they recited the pledge of allegiance: In Canada, no, we don’t recite anything in English/language arts classes. And in the USA, the Pledge isn’t for learning pronunciation, it’s just a national pride thing. However, when I was learning French in school as a second language, yes, we did poems and tongue twisters! It can be very useful for practicing pronunciation in a second language, much more so than in a first language where you probably don’t really need the practice. If you want fun tongue twisters to read aloud in English, I’d recommend looking up poetry by Shell Silverstein! He wrote poems mostly for children, but they’re very silly and funny even for adults and make great pronunciation practice as they use fairly common words in unusual ways.