Strategies For College English Pronunciation Teaching:a Study Based On Memetics

Pronunciation is very important for any language learners, so research on pronunciation teaching has long been the basic applied research among the language researchers and teachers. The advent of memetics theory provides us with a new perspective to explore strategies in English pronunciation teaching. Based on three criteria of a successful meme-fecundity, fidelity and longevity as well as the features in the four stages of successful meme propagation, the present author believes that the process of the acquisition of English pronunciation can be that of the meme replication; therefore the teaching of English pronunciation is a process to help students in the process of assimilation, retention, expression and transmission, which can be realized through the methods of imitation, repetition, and recitation during their learning process.This paper attempts to study the strategies in college English pronunciation teaching from the perspective of memetics. Through an empirical study of73subjects, it presents some teaching strategies, mainly imitation, repetition and recitation, which have been employed to help students improve their pronunciation in English, and which are concerned with the theory of memetics. It also focuses on the correlation between strategy use and English pronunciation achievement, and the result of variation in strategy use between the experimental class and the controlled class, hoping to provide guidance to teaching English pronunciation in college.The paper first provides a detailed literature review of memetics, pronunciation teaching and strategy instruction. Then it sets up the theoretic basis of the study and shows the revelation of memetics to pronunciation teaching. Based on this, three types of memeplexes in English pronunciation—phoneme memeplex, rhythm memeplex and intonation memeplex have been proposed and discussed, emphasizing that the strategies of imitation, repetition and recitation contribute positively to the replication and transmission of mememplex. As far as the methodology is concerned, two questionnaires, a pre-test and a post test have been adopted and analysis of what has been drawn from the application of the strategies of imitation, repetition, and recitation in learning English pronunciation has been made, which shows that the strategies of imitation, repetition, and recitation in teaching English pronunciation from a memetics perspective is an effective one, able to improve students pronunciation acquisition.At the end of the paper, the author points out that to apply the strategies of imitation, repetition and recitation, the amount, the length, the variety and the interest of the samples should all be taken into consideration. The author also points out the limitations of the study, hoping that further research will be done to contribute to the.improvement of strategy use in pronunciation teaching.