An Empirical Study Of Oral English Teaching For Junior High School Students Based On The Memetic Theory

Memetics is a new theory that explains the law of cultural evolution based on Darwin’s theory of evolution.It attempts to interpret the universal connection between things and the evolutionary nature of cultural inheritance from diachronic and synchronic perspectives.This study combines memetics with oral English teaching in junior high school,carries out a research on oral English teaching from four stages of meme life cycle(assimilation,memorization,expression and transmission),which aims to explore the influence of the application of memetics on junior middle school students’ oral English.This study adopts a combination of quantitative research and qualitative research,mainly using questionnaire survey,experimental method and interview method to explore the following questions: 1.What is the current status of oral English learning in junior high school students? 2.Compared with the traditional teaching mode,can the application of memetics improve junior high school students’ oral English? If can,what are the specific aspects?This study applies memetics to oral English teaching and conducts a three-month teaching experiment.The experimental subjects are students from two classes of Grade two in a middle school in Shandong province.The author adopts the traditional reading and recitation teaching method in control class.In experimental class,the author adopts the meme theory to conduct Input-Imitation-Output oral teaching according to the four stages of the meme’s life cycle.The teaching materials of the control class are textbook texts and its audio.The teaching materials of the experimental class are relevant topics as supplementary materials in addition to textbook texts and audio.The main findings of this study are as follows: 1.Compared with oral study,junior high school students’ pay more attention to vocabulary and grammar knowledge and lack sufficient practice and attention in oral English.2.The application of memetics has a certain influence on the oral English level of junior high school students and it improved student’s oral English level.The application of memetics has improved the junior high school students’ oral English in fluency and coherence,lexical diversity,grammar diversity and accuracy as well as pronunciation and intonation,and it also improved students overall level.This further suggests that in the process of oral English teaching,we should take students as the center of the class,create a relaxed and pleasant classroom atmosphere,stimulate students’ interest in oral English learning,and enhance their confidence in oral English expression.At the same time,we should pay attention to oral English teaching,the skills and methods of oral English teaching,so as to achieve the common input of oral English teaching and western culture,and promote the improvement of students’ imitation level and oral expression ability.This study applies memetics to the oral English teaching of junior high school students,deepens and expands the memetics theory and provides a new way of thinking for oral English teaching.Although this study still has shortcomings,it still needs to be further improved.However,the author believes that the application of memetics can improve junior high school students’ oral English.