The Effects Of Memetics-based English Writing Teaching On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Performance

This study is undertaken to investigate the effects of Memetics-based English writing teaching on senior high school students’ English writing performance.The theoretical bases of this study are Krashen’s Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Constructivism Theory.The significance of the study is to provide some guidance on English writing teaching and learning with the expectation of improving students’ English writing performance,especially in respect of vocabulary,sentence structure and discourse coherence,through the four stages of Memetics-based writing lesson.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1.What effects does Memetics-based English writing teaching have on senior high school students’ writing performance on vocabulary level’?2.What effects does Memetics-based English writing teaching have on senior high school students’ writing performance on sentence level’?3.What effects does Memetics-based English writing teaching have on senior high school students’ writing performance on discourse level?Participants were 84 students from two parallel Senior Three classes in Jiangsu Jingjiang Senior High School,with 41 students in the experimental class and 43 students making up the control class.The instruments of this study were two writing tests and an interview which was conducted among 9 students selected from the experimental class.Data analysis involved double scoring,calculation and comparison.All the compositions were scored by two experienced teachers with the same rating scale for Jiangsu Matriculation English Writing Test.Then the data were processed by SPSS 24.0 with Paired Samples T-test Analysis employed to calculate and compare students’ writing performance before and after the teaching experiment in terms of vocabulary,sentence structure and discourse coherence.Also,the interview was taped and transcribed into text for further analysis.This study has yielded the following major findings:Firstly,Memetics-based English writing teaching has a positive effect on students’writing performance on vocabulary level.Though students’ vocabulary improves the least by 0.5 of the three,there is a noticeable difference at.001,indicating that their second writing shows a wider range of words,which they can use appropriately and flexibly in their writing.This may be that there are a bunch of comprehensible vocabulary memes provided for students in EC to memorize and use.Through recitation and imitation,students are inclined to use varieties of words to express their ideas in writingSecondly,Memetics-based English writing teaching enhances students’ writing on sentence level.Quantitatively,their sentence structure improves by 0.68 at.000 Qualitatively,all the students interviewed reach a consensus that this English writing teaching approach enhances their syntactic complexity and diversity.The reason for their improvement on sentence level may be that they are exposed to strictly-selected sentence structure memes and their previous writing practice prompts them to pay closer attention to expressions in the learning materials,which confirms Swain’s(1998)claim that output promotes noticing of linguistic features in inputThirdly,Memetics-based English writing teaching improves students’ writing performance on discourse level.For one thing,their writing performance on discourse level improves the most by 0.99 at.000.For another,their post-test writing is better organized and more coherent with appropriate connection.The improvement may be attributed to the well organized and perfectly coherent model essays.With more attention focused on the use of diverse connectives,students seem to learn more about discourse coherenceThe study provides the following implications.Firstly,the appropriate selection of language memes is a guarantee of effective language input,so teachers can integrate comprehensible and relevant learning materials into their writing teaching.Secondly,teachers are supposed to not only explain the language memes in detail but also help students enhance their retention of the language memes in an effective way.Finally,specific and constructive feedback should be provided to students on their writing.Teachers are supposed to give continuous feedback with not only marks but specific comments and analysisThere are still some limitations in the present study.First of all,the duration of the empirical study is relatively short.Second,the study is limited by the sample size and procedures.Third,the researcher’s understanding and grasp of the Memetics theory is not sufficient on account of the limited academic research knowledge.Therefore,this study remains to be improved more accurately in future studies.