A Study Of The Application Of Recitation Input In High School Oral English Teaching Based On Memetics

Memetics is a new science which studies the replication, spreading andevolution of memes. The term “meme” was coined by Dawkins in his book “TheSelfish Gene” to explain the phenomenon of cultural evolution. Dawkins stated memeas a “unit of cultural transmission”. Memetics has become an interdisciplinary fieldthat is applied in biology, psychology, sociology and linguistics. In the year2001,professor He Ziran introduced this theory into China, and up to now, memetics isregarded as one of the most advanced theories in applied linguistics in China. Thebasic feature of meme replication is through imitation, which is the core feature ofrecitation, as recitation requires a lot of imitation. Besides, according to Krashen’stheory of language acquisition, comprehensible input is a necessary condition forsecond language acquisition. Input language which contains items that are slightlybeyond learner’s present linguistic competence. Thus, recitation can be regarded as akind of comprehensible input, and recitation is also a good way for imitation. Basedon memetics and the rule of language replication and spreading, recitation, serving asa kind of comprehensible input can be helpful in language acquisition.In Chinese Senior High schools, oral English proficiency is not given enoughattention. Both teachers and parents pay attention only to students’ performance in thewritten exams. Therefore high school students can do well in the exams, understandwritten English, however their oral English proficiency is far from satisfactory. In factoral English is of great importance in students’ overall language acquisition. Due to the above reasons, this research will study the effect of recitation input on high schoolstudents’ oral English proficiency from the perspective of memetics. The thesis hasfive parts in general, including the background of the research, literature review of thememetics theories, introduction of oral English proficiency, the research methodology,its procedures, results and discussions. From this research, the author thinks that it canbe applicable to adopt recitation input based on memetics as a means to improvestudents’ oral English proficiency. In the last part of the paper, the author also gavesome suggestions on oral English teaching and discussed its pedagogical implications.Throughout the thesis, methodology of teaching experiment, interview andquestionnaire have been applied.