An Experimental Study On The Application Of Lexical Approach In Senior High School English Writing Teaching From The Memetic Perspective

Writing,as a way of language output,symbolizes the ability of comprehensive language use.At present,there are many problems in the teaching of English writing in senior high schools in China,partly due to the fact that not enough importance has been attached to English writing teaching,and most importantly,due to a shortage of efficient teaching approaches,which causes inadequate writing skills of senior high school students.Facing this negative situation,many scholars have explored different teaching approaches to improve the teaching mode of English writing,writing teaching and students' writing ability.Among these include memetics,by applying which scholars hope to improve teaching efficiency,and lexical chunks,where students are expected to make improvements with better chunks acquisition.Recently,while researches combining these two for teaching practice have existed,most of them deal with theoretical analysis and a few of them,which are experimental studies,make university students or college students the subjects of their researches.In other words,studies with the subject of senior high school students are rare.This paper combines lexical approach with memetics in the experimental research.Taking lexical approach as the core and memetics as the theoretical scaffold,this teaching mode is applied in the field of senior high school writing teaching and is expected to give ideas on it.The subjects of this experiment are students from two international classes,Class A and Class B,of Grade 11th from a certain high school in Changzhou,Jiangsu,whose average age is 17.The experiment has lasted for a semester,in which Class A is labeled as controlled class,while Class B as experimental class.For Class A,a traditional writing teaching method is applied and for Class B,lexical approach is adopted from the perspective of memetics.To pass SAT and the TOEFL test,students of international classes are required to have a greater English writing capacity.As a result,this research is of significance to filling the gap of different subjects.This thesis aims to study the role that lexical approach from the memetic perspective plays in English writing teaching of senior high school.For this aim,this experiment is carried out on the following two aspects:one is the impact of this teaching mode on the writing skills of students;the other is the impact of this teaching mode on the writing attitudes of students,including writing anxiety,writing confidence and writing motivation.Thus,two research questions of the study are addressed as follows:(1)What effects does lexical approach from the memetic perspective have on the students' writing performance?(2)What effects does lexical approach from the memetic perspective have on the students' writing attitudes?Tests,questionnaires and interviews are adopted to collect data and after the careful study and analysis,main findings of the study are summarized as below:Firstly,the results of pre-test and post-test show that students who accept lexical approach from the memetic perspective have better writing scores than that who accept traditional wiring teaching approach,which indicates that lexical approach from the memetic perspective has a positive impact on students' writing skills.Secondly,the results of questionnaires show that students of experimental class have got greater improvements in their attitude towards English writing after the experiment,and they have far lower writing anxiety,as well as greater wiring confidence and writing motivation than before.In addition,the results of interviews on random samples in the experimental class also show that students consider they have better writing skills and they think this teaching mode is conducive to their English writing practice.This research can offer some advice on the English writing teaching of senior high school,especially on students from international classes.In English writing teaching,teachers could consider combining memetics with lexical approach to improve students'learning efficiency,as well as to improve teaching methods and teaching quality at the same time.