An Empirical Study On The Application Of Memetics Theory To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

English writing embodies learners’ comprehensive language ability, thus it has alwaysbeen an essential part in English examination. In Chinese class, traditional writing teachingusually focuses on writing production, that is, teachers attach importance on the errorcorrection; neglect students’ accumulation of language materials. As a result, students havemany troubles in English writing which leads to lower writing interest, and their Englishwriting ability are not improved satisfactorily.In order to improve traditional writing teaching methods, this research tries to applymemetics theory to English writing in senior high school. Memetics is a new theory basedon Darwin’s theory of evolution, which can be used to explain the rules of culturalevolution. In the aspect of linguistics, the theory is mainly embodied in the duplication andpropagation of language memes such as vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and sentencestructures, etc. Memes survive on replication. It is not a meme until the idea or informationis duplicated and spread. Language learning is the process to duplicate and transmitlanguage memes.The study aims to combine memetics with English writing teaching in senior highschool and explores an effective way to improve the writing ability of senior high schoolstudents. The experiment was conducted in two classes of Grade Two (experimental classand control class) with the same number of students and similar English level for a periodof one semester. In the process of the experiment, pre-test, post-test, questionnaires andinterview were carried out and the statistical software SPSS11.5was applied for analyzingthe relevant data.The followings are the hypotheses:Firstly, the memetics-based writing teaching can improve students’ self-confidence inEnglish writing, reduce their anxiety, and make their attitudes towards English writingmore positive.Secondly, he memetics-based writing teaching can contribute to improving students’writing proficiency.After the experiment, the main conclusions were listed as follows:The data from the questionnaire of experimental class’ affective factors on Englishwriting before and after the experiment showed that the Sig.(2-tailed) was0.000(p <0.05),which indicated that after the training of the memetics-based writing teaching, studentswere more self-confident in English writing, their anxiety became significantly lower, andtheir attitudes towards English writing more positive; the results of Independent-Sample T Test and Paired-Sample T Test of the two classes’ writing scores in the pre-test andpost-test was Sig.(2-tailed)=0.000, p <0.05, which showed that the training of thememetics-based writing teaching effectively improved the accuracy and norm of students’used vocabulary and sentences, and thus improved their writing achievements.Therefore, it is effective and feasible to apply memetics to English writing in seniorhigh school.