The Research On Application Of Memetics To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary is the basis of language learning and the premise for learning other language skills.There exists a status change of the vocabulary learning in foreign language teaching.And there are new requirements for English vocabulary teaching and addressing the problems in vocabulary learning.Therefore,the old traditional vocabulary teaching methods need to be changed.With new classroom practices and methods being created constantly,both researchers and teachers need to make valiant efforts to find more efficient ways of vocabulary teaching.Memetics based on Darwin's evolutionary theory studies the replication,spread,and evolution of memes.According to this theory,everything a person has learned by imitating someone else can be thought a meme.In other words,everything that is passed from person to person by way of an imitation can be considered a meme.Therefore,based on memetics and previous related studies,the thesis here argues for the broad view that all the established words in a language(free morphemes)can be treated as the vocabulary of memes.This all-encompassing view includes affixes,roots,and other word formations(bound morphemes),as well as lexical chunks together with the major rules of word formation and popular vocabulary learning strategies.According to the view,this thesis mainly comes up with two pertinent questions:1.Can the memetic way of vocabulary teaching produce positive effects for senior high school students' vocabulary learning strategies?2.Can the memetic way of vocabulary teaching improve senior high school students' vocabulary proficiency?This research was conducted in Senior High School attached to Bohai University in Jinzhou,Liaoning province.The experimental participants consists of 102 students from two classes of Grade One.One of the classes is an experimental class called EC,the other class is the control group named CC.In the process of the experiment,the author adopted the new vocabulary meme teaching to teach vocabulary based on the characteristics and lifecycles of the meme.However,the CC still used the traditional vocabulary teaching methods.The instruments used in this research project include the questionnaire,the tests,and the interview.The collected data were analyzed in SPSS(19.0 version).Based on the qualitative and quantitative data analysis,it was easy to draw a few conclusions.First,the vocabulary meme teaching can produce positive effects for senior high school students' vocabulary learning strategies.It can help students build positivevocabulary learning beliefs and effectively cultivate students' vocabulary learning strategies.Second,the vocabulary meme teaching approach can improve senior high school students' vocabulary proficiency.It is author' sincere hope that the findings of this thesis are beneficial for teachers skills in teaching,students' ability to learn and be an encouragement for the further study about the subject.Finally,the author will cite some of the implications and limitations of this thesis.And a few suggestions for further study will be offered.