An Experimental Study Of English Writing Pedagogy For Senior High School Students From The Memetics Perspective

The English Curriculum Standard of General Senior High School(2017 Edition)aims to develop the students’ English Key Competencies including language ability,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.To some extent,writing is the embodiment of English Key Competencies.Considering current students’ English writing situation,this paper,based on Memetics,selects two parallel classes in the second year of senior middle school as the research subjects and conducts the educational experiment method to study effects on students’ writing competence under Memetic pedagogy.It also demonstrates the Memetic teaching methodology by taking a writing course as an exanple.This paper mainly answers the following questions:Firstly,whether and to what extent can the Memctics-based method of writing teaching improve the students’ English writing performances.Secondly,what are the writing ability dimensions that are influenced by Memties-based English writing teaching pedagogy.Thirdly,what are the operation mechanisms and specific implementation strategies of Memeties-based writing teaching.After a 16-week teaching experiment,the study results are as follows:(1)By comparing the post-test scores of the experimental class and the control class with Independent Samples Test,significance was found for the experimental class,which shows that the Memeties-based writing teaching achieved significant effectiveness in improving the students’ writing performanees.Moreover,according to the comparison of the pre-test and post-test scores of experimental class and control class with Paired Samples Tests,significance in improvement is found in the experimental class only.Therefore,it is concluded that Mcmetics-bascd writing teaching is more conducive to improving the students’ writing performances than the traditional writing teaching mode.(2)In the light of comparison of English writing ability pre and post writing teaching,Memetic pedagogy plays an effective role in enhancing students’ writing structure clarity,text coherence,articulation clarity,content richness and language accuracy.While it has no significant impact on the topic pertinence,normative writing and paper aesthetics.(3)The mechanism of Memetics-based Hnglish writing teaching:The first stage is meme assimilation where teachers need to attract the host’s(students)attention and activate the potential memes.Followed by correlating the students’ cognitive system and input language memes;The second stage is meme retention in which students consolidate and internalize language memes through the thematic context and adopt the strategies of imitating,reciting and retelling to maintain the writing memes;The third stage is meme expression.By this students verify and expand of memes through the writing practice;Lastly,in the meme transmission stage where in students cooperate with teachers in enhancing the accuracy and fluency of writing language,and promoting the innovation of meme variation through feedback activities.The results show that Memetics-based writing teaching can effectively improve students’ English writing ability.This paper puts forward suggestions from the perspectives of teachers,students and teaching materials respectively:(1)Teachers shall enrich the writing teaching meme base and assist memes to go through the complete life cycle;Secondly,selected the memes which accord with the students’ cognitive level.Then practice the writing memes through the context;Thirdly,stimulate the host’s subjectivity and cultivate students’ awareness of using memes in writing.(2)Students are encouraged to use the learning strategies to maintain language memes and establish a writing meme library.(3)Textbook editors shall add more writing practice and improve the textbook meme database construction.