A Study Of Productive Vocabulary Acquisition In College English Based On Memetics

It is widely recognized that vocabulary which servers as the cornerstone oflanguage plays an essential role in language learning. Nation (1990) proposed thatvocabulary can be divided into receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary, and theformer refers to the words that can be easily recognized or understood in reading orlistening, while the latter refers to those that can be automatically applied to speaking orwriting. Whereas in the college English teaching process, the author noticed that thereare still many problems existed in college non-English majors’ vocabulary learning,such as the unbalanced development of receptive and productive vocabulary among thestudents, the limited quantity of the students’ productive vocabulary and the ambiguityof the strategies of vocabulary learning. In recent years, more and more attention isfocused on the study of vocabulary acquisition both home and abroad, and greatachievements have been made. However, few researches especially empiricalresearches have been done in the field of productive vocabulary.As a new theory based on Darwin’s evolution theory, memetics explains the law ofcultural evolution. The proposition of it has brought a lot of new perspectives for theresearches of many fields, such as teaching, information transmission etc. According tomemetics, language itself can be regarded as a kind of meme, which can be representedin the form of words, phrases, sentences and even discourses. Through the study of thecharacteristics, types and life cycles of memes, this paper re-examines Englishvocabulary acquisition from the perspective of language meme, and attaches greatimportance to the role that vocabulary meme plays in vocabulary learning. The authorattempts to apply vocabulary memes into productive vocabulary acquisition whichemphasized much on the integration of recitation, imitation, and association withmodern teaching techniques, and its feasibility and effectiveness will be approved by anempirical study.This study chose103sophomores coming from two classes who were majoring in architectonics from Shandong Jianzhu University as participants, among which class114as the control class and class115as the experimental class, and the experimentlasted for sixteen weeks. In the experimental class, the memetics-based way of teachingstrategies were adopted while in the control class, the traditional teaching methods wereadopted. A vocabulary level test was carried out between the two classes before theexperiment, so was a questionnaire which was relative to the vocabulary learningstrategies. After the experiment, a productive vocabulary test was conducted betweenthe two classes, and the students in experimental class were required to answer aquestionnaire that was similar with the questionnaire before the experiment. By theabove means, the author proposed the following three hypotheses:1. The memetics-based way of vocabulary study can help to enhance theparticipants’ competence of productive vocabulary acquisition.2. Compared with conventional methods, the memetics-based way of study ismore effective in improving the participants’ awareness of using vocabulary learningstrategies in productive vocabulary acquisition.3. The memetics-based way of vocabulary study can contribute much to arousingthe participants’ confidence and initiative in English learning.According to the analysis of the results of the study, the above three hypothesesare confirmed. The scores of the productive vocabulary test of the students inexperimental class were much higher than that of the students in control class. What’smore, the results of the questionnaire showed that students in experimental class hadgenerally formed a sense of using vocabulary learning strategies, besides, most of themhad been aroused the confidence and initiative in English vocabulary learning.Therefore, it is necessary and feasible to apply memetics to the college productivevocabulary acquisition.Finally, according to major findings of this study, the author points out thelimitations of the present study and proposed the implications and suggestions forfurther research.