An Empirical Study On The Application Of The Memetics Theory To English Writing Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

In China, when students learn English, they need to master the four basic skills,that is, listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among them, writing is alwaysconsidered to be the most difficult skill. Therefore, how to improve the students’English writing has been a hot topic for the researchers. During the recent years, thecompositions in the High School Entrance Examinations also pay attention to checkstudents’ language comprehensive ability. But at present, the writing training in theEnglish teaching in Junior Middle Schools still comparatively falls behind. Up to now,few people apply both the memetics theory and the Input and Output Theory inSecond Language Acquisition to do a research on the English writing teaching inJunior Middle Schools. Hence, this study is trying to combine the memetics theorywith the Input and Output Theory in SLA and apply them in the English writingteaching in junior middle schools.Two questions are tested through a teaching experiment and a questionnaire:1)Can the English writing teaching model based on the memetics theory help studentsimprove their English writing proficiency?2) Can the English writing teaching modelbased on the memetics theory help students reduce the English writing anxiety andarouse their interest in the English writing? In order to seek answers to these twoquestions, a framework involving the memetics theory and the Input and OutputTheory in SLA was established, in which the four processes of meme replication,namely, assimilation, retention, expression and transmission, were identified as beingequivalent to the four teaching procedures of SLA: input, memorization, processingand output.A teaching experiment was carried out to testify the hypotheses formulated. Theexperiment lasted ten weeks.69Grade Nine students from Dong Qu Middle School inLuo Gang District of Guangzhou participated in this experiment. A pre-experimentEnglish writing test was held to prove that the students of both the ExperimentalGroup (N=33) and the Control Group (N=36) were of the same writing proficiency.Then, there were ten weeks of English writing training based on the memetics theoryfor the Experimental Group, and a post-experiment English writing test was held to testify whether the English writing training based on the memetics theory could helpstudents improve their English writing proficiency. Meanwhile, pre-experiment andpost-experiment questionnaires were distributed to the students of the ExperimentalGroup to find out whether their English writing anxiety was reduced or not.The study yielded the following results:(1)The results of Independent-Sample TTest of the two classes’ English writing proficiency in pre-test and post-test indicatedthat the English writing teaching model based on the memetics theory improvedstudents’ English writing proficiency, and (2) The results of a comparison between thetwo questionnaires to the Experimental Group indicated that the English writingteaching model based on the memetics theory reduced students’ English writinganxiety and aroused their interest in English writing. It is concluded that amemetics-based approach to writing can improve students’ English writingproficiency, reducing students’ English writing anxiety and arousing their interest inEnglish writing and that it is necessary and feasible to apply the memetics theory toEnglish writing to junior middle school students.