Analysis Of Language Meme In CET4 Writing And Study Of Teaching Strategies

Memetics is a new theory based on Darwin's evolutionary theory to explain the evolution of the culture. The core of Memetics is imitation, and language memes are just like genes that can be copied, transmitted and finally survived among vectors. The life cycle of successful language memes will experience four stages: assimilation, recitation, expression and transmission. This process can connect closely with the process of ESL writing teaching, which includes input, memorization, output and interaction to form a new ESL writing teaching model. By analyzing the characteristics of CET4 writing language, we find that the language in CET4 writing can be divided into two kinds from the perspective of Memetics, which are memetic genotype and memetic phenotype. This can also lead our students to form their own ESL writing language meme pool to enhance their English writings. Therefore, this thesis will apply Memetics to the field of CET4 College English writing teaching, which aims to explore an effective way of college English writing teaching.In this paper, the thesis is carried out with the main focus on exploring the two questions: 1) Can Memetics teaching model help non-English major students improve their skills of English writing in CET4 and further improve their ESL writing ability?2)Can Memetics teaching model change non-English major students'attitudes and opinions towards English? In terms of methodology, this research includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, such as literature review, experimental study and questionnaires. The experiment lasted 16 weeks. A pre-test and a post-test were used to both the experimental group and the control group and data were collected and analyzed. At last questionnaires were distributed to the experimental group to know their attitudes towards the whole experiment.At the final part of this thesis, we find that Memetics teaching model do improve non-English major students'writing skills in CET4 and change their negative attitudes towards English writing. This teaching model not only improves students'writing competence in the content and the correctness of language uses aspect but also improves their comprehensive ability of English.At last, some suggestions are given on how to apply Memetics to English writing teaching effectively and limitations and direction of further studies are shown in this part.