An Experimental Study Of English Practical Writing Teaching In Senior High School Based On Memetics

Memetics is a new theory for interpreting cultural evolution. The features and the transmitted ways of meme provide a new perspective for research and also inspire foreign language teaching. Writing, as the key and difficult part of English teaching, plays a significant role in developing students' comprehensive ability of using English. But English practical writing teaching of senior high school in China is still exam-oriented, teachers usually emphasize the accuracy of writing, giving inadequate attention to the writing topics and its styles, which may not only lead to students' lacking style awareness, but also reduce their interest in writing and thus hinder their creative writing. To improve this situation, the present study, in the context of the new National English Curriculum, based on memetics and the contextual configuration, explores a new teaching model of practical writing and conducts a thirteen-week experimental research on it. Through the writing tests conducted among 107 senior high Grade One students respectively in the experiment class(54 students) and the control class(53 students), students' composition analysis, questionnaires on students' attitudes towards English writing and their writing skills, as well as the interviews on the experimental teacher before and after the experiment, the present study verifies two hypotheses:(1) the teaching model of practical writing based on memetics can improve students' attitudes towards English writing;(2) the teaching model of writing can raise students' practical writing abilities, especially enhancing their readers awareness and stylistic appropriacy. Thus, the efficiency of the new teaching model of English practical writing is confirmed, and it could be an effective tool to enhance students' abilities of practical writing in English and a tool to improve students' attitudes towards writing.