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

Memetics is a new theory which explains the laws of cultural evolution based on Darwin's theory of evolution.It was first proposed by Dawkins,a professor of Oxford University in 1976,then introduced into China and developed by Professor He Ziran in the early 21 century.It provides new ideas for English writing teaching.Meme,as a core concept of memetics,can be replicated and transmitted by imitation to survive and keep in human's brains.On the one hand,a successful meme development has a close relationship with the process of imitation writing.On the other hand,two patterns of meme replication and transmission which are genotype and phenotype can be combined with the language input to guide the students in imitation writing.Therefore,the research combined the memetics with the imitation writing is to establish an imitation writing method based on memetics so as to find a new effective method in English writing teaching for senior high school students.The research questions are as follows.(1)What effects does the application of English imitation writing teaching based on memetics have on senior high school students' writing proficiency?(2)What effects does the application of the English imitation writing teaching based on memetics have on writing anxiety of senior high school students?The experiment lasted over three months.The subjects are 87 students of grade one who came from two parallel classes of XX senior high boarding school in Shijiazhuang,Hebei province.During the experiment,the imitation writing teaching based on the memetics was used in the experimental class while the traditional product writing teaching method was applied in the control class.At last,the author gained the data from the writing tests and questionnaires and inputted into SPSS19.0 to have an analysis.The conclusions are as follows.(1)The English imitation writing method based on the memetics can be seen as an effective way to improve students' writing ability especially in the aspect of organization,lexis,content and grammar.(2)The English imitation writing method based on the memetics can be seen as an effective way to reduce students' writing anxiety especially in the aspect of somatic anxiety,avoidance behavior and cognitive anxiety.Although there are still some shortcomings in this study,it provides some practice and suggestions for senior high school writing teaching in hope of encouraging more scholars toconduct more deep researches in this field.