A Study Of English Prefabricated Chunks From The Memetic Perspective

The prefabricated chunks are extremely common in the second language acquisition.The prefabricated chunk is a kind of language unit combined with function of grammar,semantics and context,while meme can explain how prefabricated chunks are innovating and developing.In the second language learning,language transmission is the same as the spread gene in the natural selection of the biological environment.This paper analyzes the characteristics and creativity of prefabricated chunks in Chinese college students’ compositions based on the meme to guide the teaching of the prefabricated chunks.The data was from the writing contest for university students in Sichuan province in 2014.There are 78 essays compiled into a book divided into three grades by the experts.Based on this corpus,this paper analyzes the characteristics and creativity of these high-frequency prefabricated chunks in students’ compositions based on meme theory.The analysis has the following steps.(1)With the help of retrieval software Ant Conc3.4.4,firstly,the 78 compositions are divided into 3 small corpora,and then we find out the high-frequency chunks and their characteristics among three corpuses and the differences between the prefabricated chunks at each level.(2)By adopting the meme theory and process of language acquisition this paper analyzes the application and innovation of high frequency prefabricated chunks.(3)Contrastively analyze the creativity of same prefabricated chunks from three corpora.The leading results of this paper are as follows:1.Form the corpus,we can find prefabricated chunks which are similar to the Chinese expressions are favored by the students,because they can make less effort to understand and use these prefabricated chunks.2.We can find that the excellent compositions and the good compositions use more frequently prefabricated chunks than the average compositions based on the comparison of the composition of three levels.Prefabricated chunk patterns can help students to avoid some grammatical errors and express ideas more native like.3.From the samples of the corpus’ composition,we can find that the basic structure of the prefabricated chunks is not merely simple imitation,but the retention of the core sentence pattern(the meme’s genotype)based on the specific context and learner’s English level.The four stages of meme selection and the retention of meme’s genotypes can explain the traits of linguistic meme’s transmission.4.The students’ innovation in prefabricated chunks is limited to the change in the lexical level and the transformation is mainly embodied in the word collocation.The students of high scores are better at expressing the formal expressions.The four stages of meme selection are similar to the four steps of second language acquisition.It can explain why those prefabricated chunks which are easily acquired in corpus are consistent with the popular high frequency chunks,and these chunks are the focus of students’ attention and creation.This paper is beneficial for the further study of the prefabricated chunks in the English writing.The study of characteristics is about prefabricated chunks which are often adopted and constantly changing can help teachers appropriately instruct the prefabricated chunks learning in the teaching process.