A Study On The Application Of Memetics To College English Writing Teaching

Memetics,a new theory based on Darwin's theory of evolution,explains culture evolution.Because of the close relationship between culture and language,memetics has extensive application value in the field of second language acquisition.Based on the characteristics and the existing problems of CET-4 English writing,this research applies memetics to non-English major students'English writing teaching,aiming to explore the possibilities of an effective college English writing teaching approach.A complete life cycle of meme includes assimilation,retention,expression and transmission,the same as the development of foreign language learning.Combining with life cycle of meme and traditional writing teaching approaches,this research designs the whole experimental writing teaching as two stages:the first stage is assimilation and retention,and the second stage is expression and transmission.In the first stage,materials with strong language memes are introduced to students and many different ways of modeling are adopted to strengthen assimilation and retention of these memes in students.In the second stage,students express and transmit these strong memes which are successfully assimilated and kept through writing compositions and excellent compositions adopting many strong language memes are spread again.Hence,these language memes get into next cycling.This research adopts qualitative and quantitative methods and the whole experiment is carried out for 24 weeks.90 freshmen of grade 2013 from Xi 'an University of Arts and Science took part in the experiment.First,all students in control and experimental classes take a pre-test on CET-4 writing before the experiment to check whether students' English writing from the two classes are of the same level.Then,students in experimental class take the experiment while those in controlled class still adopt traditional writing teaching approach.After the experiment,post-test on writing and a questionnaire including 15 questions are launched,at the same time the writer interviews four randomly chosen students,then analyses data collected.Paired sample T test,independent sample T test of these two classes and questionnaire in experiment class,even the interview show that the experiment averagely achieves expected result.And the following are conclusions:writing teaching approach under the guidance of memetics can improve the level of non-English major students' English writing;writing teaching approach under the guidance of memetics can change non-English major students' attitude towards English writing.