An Empirical Study On The Application Of Language Memetics To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Writing is a very important language output skill,and it is also one of the most difficult skills to master in English learning of listening,speaking,reading,writing and viewing.In addition,writing is an important criterion for measuring students’ comprehensive language ability and language proficiency.As is well known to all,writing is inseparable from Language learning,which can not only consolidate the learned language knowledge,but also is an important means of language output and communication.At present,senior high school students,however,generally have low English writing ability,being lack of self-confidence,a solid English foundation and good writing habits.As a result,it is difficult for students to "write bravely,write properly and write well".For English teachers,although there are many theoretical and empirical researches in senior high school English writing teaching,there is still no very perfect and effective writing teaching model for them to apply.Therefore,it is necessary for English teachers to conduct researches in English writing teaching.Based on this,the author tries to teach English writing in senior high school from the perspective of language memetics,with the purpose of exploring an English classroom teaching model suitable for English writing classes in senior high school.This study draws on the outstanding scientific research results of experts and scholars,and takes language memetic theory,input theory,and output theory as the theoretical basis.Two parallel science classes in a senior high school taught by the author in Taiyuan City,Shanxi Province are selected as the research objects.The experiment lasts 14 weeks,with Class 154 being an experimental class and Class 155 being a control class.The students in the two classes have almost the same level of writing skills and certain writing foundation before the experiment.Applying language memetic theory to English writing teaching in senior high school,the author aims to answer the following two research questions: 1)Does the application of language memetic theory to English writing teaching in senior high school help improve students’ negative attitude to writing? If so,is the change obvious? 2)Does the application of language memetic theory to English writing teaching in senior high school help students improve their English writing ability? If so,is the effect obvious?In the experiment,the author applies language memetic theory to the English writing teaching in the experimental class.The author chooses the materials which are suitable for students to imitate,both from English textbooks and foreign newspapers and journals according to students’ academic levels.Students read the materials repeatedly and perceive as many lexical chunks as possible while the author designs various activities to help students fully master lexical chunks.At the same time,the students brainstorm and mobilize the knowledge they have learned to provide more lexical chunks,supported by the supplemented activities to achieve their understanding internalization.Then the students continue to carry out cyclic training,and accomplish their writing through self-modification,peer correction,and under the teacher’s guidance to reorganize the composition.After that,the students improve their preliminary writing through interaction with peers,teachers and the media for quite a few times.Finally,the students complete their writing independently and hand it in.The author also collected data through questionnaire surveys,writing tests and interviews,and used SPSS16.0 for analysis.The results of the research show that: 1)The application of language memetic theory to English writing teaching in senior high school helps to improve the students’ negative writing attitudes,and the effect is significant.Some significant changes have taken place in students’ attitudes towards writing during the three phases of writing: pre-writing,while-writing and post-writing.The students’ enthusiasm for English writing and self-confidence in English writing have been improved,and the students’ writing anxiety has also been relieved;2)The application of language memetic theory to English writing teaching in senior high school can significantly improve senior high school students’ English writing ability.The richness of the students’ using language chunks has been significantly improved,and the vocabulary with the same meaning can be used in different chunks in their compositions.Furthermore,the students’ Chinglish has been greatly improved,and their use of language is more authentic.At last,the author also elaborates on the limitations of this research and its implications for English teaching in senior high school.