模因论视角下高中英语模仿写作教学的实验研究

本文是一篇教学论文,研究被试均来自于河北省石家庄市 XX 中学高一年级两个平行班的 87 名学生。在实验过程中，实验班采用了模因论指导下的英语模仿写作教学法，控制班则继续采用传统的结果写作法。通过写作测试和问卷,笔者收集数据并输入 SPSS 19.0 进行分析，最终得出结论如下：(1) 模因论指导下的英语模仿写作教学能有效提高学生的写作能力，学生在篇章结构，词汇，内容和语法方面的写作能力均得到一定改善。(2) 模因论指导下的英语模仿写作教学能有效缓解学生的写作焦虑，其中，认知焦虑，回避行为和躯体焦虑三个方面的焦虑程度都有所下降。

Chapter I Introduction

1.1 Research background
As an international language, English has been playing an important part in China’seducation field. Modern foreign language teaching not only emphasizes the languageknowledge, but also pays more attention to the overall language ability. Based on the NationalEnglish Curriculum Standard of Senior High School (2017), language skills, an vital part inoverall language ability, can be pided into five aspects including listening, speaking, reading,viewing and writing. Of the five skills, writing is considered to be the most comprehensiveand significant indicator to evaluate learners’ writing proficiency and second languageacquisition (Weigle, 2002:13). In addition, writing, as a productive skill, reveals not onlystudents’ mastery of the lexis and syntax, but also the ability of organization and logicalexpression related to the main idea. Therefore, English writing teaching should be attachedgreat importance to in senior high school.
At the same time, a higher requirement for the senior high school students in writingskills was raised in the newly released National English Curriculum Standard of Senior HighSchool (2017). Firstly, students should have the ability to summarize what they read, outlinethe main content of their writing and express them freely with the right words andgrammatical structures. Secondly, students are able to write some daily topics such asdescribing the experiences of themselves or others, stating their views, explaining importantconcepts, introducing excellent Chinese culture and so on. Thirdly, they should have theability to choose exact vocabularies and grammar to express the meaning creatively. Finally,students are able to choose proper text type to organize their writing as needed. They canmake use of cohesive devices to reflect the logic of the content and improve the coherence ofwriting discourse.
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1.2 Research significance
Since 2005 when memetics was introduced into China by Professor He Ziran, memetictheory has been concerned and applied to foreign language teaching by more and morescholars in China. The present study integrates memetic theory into English imitation writingto explore an effective English writing approach for the senior high school students based onboth theoretical analysis and experimental research. Therefore, the study is worthy of beingconducted due to its theoretical and practical significance.
Theoretically speaking, the meme’s lifecycle and the patterns of meme replication andtransmission can guide the English imitation writing teaching. Influenced by cognitive theoryand constructive theory, memorization and imitation have been neglected in the past few years.However, the imitation writing under the guidance of memetics throws a new light upon thememorization and imitation. They shouldn’t be viewed as the simple rote and mechanicalimitation from the perspective of memetic theory. In the process of the writing teaching, theteacher should bring comprehensive teaching materials to students. The strong memes thatextracted by the teacher from the reading materials should be easily memorized andinternalized. Only in this way can the students, as potential hosts, retain and output them in aninnovative way in imitation writing. Therefore, this thesis can enrich our understanding aboutthe process of the imitation writing based on memetics and reconsider the significance ofimitation.
Practically speaking, both teachers and students can get some enlightenment from thestudy respectively. On the one hand, teachers may find a useful and practical writing teachingmethod to improve students’ writing proficiency from lexis, content, grammar andorganization. On the other hand, students can learn a new approach to instruct theircomposition writing. During the process of imitation writing based on memetics, students canaccumulate some language memes and apply them into their writing flexibly and creatively.Besides, most of the papers in China focus on the introduction of the memetics and somesuggestions to guide English teaching.The number of experimental studies on writingteaching from the perspective of memetics are relatively small, especially for senior highschool students. Therefore, this study will offer some experimental support for Englishwriting teaching based on memetics in senior high school.
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Chapter II Literature Review

2.1 Memetics
Memetics is a new theory based on Darwin's theory of evolution to explain the laws ofcultural evolution. Meme, as the core concept of the memetics, was first proposed by RichardDawkins in his masterwork The Self Gene (1976). This part will present the definition, lifecircle of memes and patterns of meme replication and transmission. In addition, the relatedresearches at home and abroad are illustrated in the final part.
2.1.1 Definition of memes
The term “meme” first appeared in a best-selling book The Selfish Gene written by thefamous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976. Dawkins believes that there issomething like a gene in human social culture, which can be a replicator of copying andtransmitting cultural evolution. He coins it as the “meme” that originated from a Greek word“mimeme” which meant that something could be imitated. To explain memes in a moreacceptable way, he also makes an analogical statement between meme and gene. “Just asgenes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs,so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a processwhich, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (Dawkins, 1976: 192). From the above,Dawkins stresses that genes are propagated through heredity, but memes, as basic units ofculture’s transmission, are spread through imitation. According to Dawkins’ ideas, memes canbe considered to be units of cultural imitation. He gives some examples of memes like tunes,ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions and ways of making pots or of building arches(Dawkins,1976:192). Later on, he further claims that meme can be viewed as a unit ofinformation or a replicator residing in one’s brain (Dawkins, 1982: 185). In total, thedefinition of meme that created by Dawkins can be summarized into two meanings, one is aunit of cultural transmission, the other is a unit of imitation.
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2.2 Imitation writing
This section consists of two parts. The former part will introduce the definition of theimitation writing and the latter one will illustrate the levels of imitation writing in details.
2.2.1 Definition of imitation writing
Imitation writing can be understood from the broad sense and narrow sense. From thebroad sense, imitation writing can be pided into two aspects. One refers to imitating theinherent law of objective things in the process of expression. For example, we often describesome things in a certain order in an article. The other means that the later generations imitatethe ideas imitated by predecessors when writing articles, which is more complicated due tomany subjective factors such as standpoints, point of view, methods, knowledge, emotionsand so on. From the narrow sense, imitation writing is a training method that is used inwriting teaching. It refers to the imitation of the object. Here refers to the model essay.Specifically, the good models of others can be followed to output a new article by means ofoverall imitation or partial imitation. The latter can be the imitation of the words, phrases,sentence structures, paragraphs, the beginning of the passage, the coherence of thepassage ,the end of the article and so on (Qian, 1989).
What’s more, Wang Yuefang (2006) argues that imitation writing is not a simplerepetition, but a re-creation based on the good models after comprehending. Liu Miao (2001)also holds the same idea and believes that imitation writing is an effective and practicalapproach to improve students’ writing ability. There are also a lot of papers abroad admittingthe importance of imitation writing. Harmer (2000) believed that many students benefitedfrom imitation in writing. Macbeth (2010) also gave his own opinions that the Englishlearners ought to make the best of good English models if they wanted to develop theirwriting competence.
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Chapter III Methodology................................ 23
3.1 Research questions...................................23
3.2 Research subjects...........................23
3.3 Research instruments........................... 23
Chapter IV Results and Discussion..................................42
4.1 Data results and discussion on writing ability test.............................42
4.1.1 Results and discussion about pre-test..................................... 42
4.1.2 Results and discussion about post-test..........................44
Chapter V Conclusion....................................52
5.1 Major findings....................................52
5.2 Limitations and suggestions for the future studies...................... 53

Chapter IV Results and Discussion

4.1 Data results and discussion on writing ability test
After the pre-test and post-test, the scores of students’ writing are given strictlyaccording to the writing test essay rating scales (see in Appendix III) from four aspectsincluding organization, lexis, content and grammar. The full score of the writing is 20 pointsand each aspect accounts for a quarter, that is 5 points. After that, all the data are organizedand inputted into SPSS19.0 to have an analysis, which is aimed at answering the first questionwhat effects the application of imitation writing teaching based on memetics have on seniorhigh school students’ writing proficiency.
4.1.1 Results and discussion about pre-test
In the pre-test, the author wanted to know if there was a significant difference in writinglevel between the EC and CC. So Independent samples T test was run to check the results.

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Chapter V Conclusion

5.1 Major findings
After analysis and discussion of the data from the writing test and questionnaire, twomajor findings are given in the following to answer the research questions in Chapter III.
Firstly, imitation writing method based on the memetics can be seen as an effective wayto improve students’ writing ability especially in the aspect of organization, lexis, content andgrammar. The author proved it by quantitative analysis of the writing test. Before theexperiment, the data from the pre-test could be used to explain that there was no significantdifference between the EC and CC not only on writing total scores but also on the foursubscales of organization, lexis, content and grammar. That is to say, students in the twoclasses had the same writing ability in the aspect of organization, lexis, content and grammar,which laid a scientific foundation for the author to conduct the following experiment. Duringthe experiment, the EC received the imitation writing method based on memetics while atraditional product writing method was adopted in the CC. After the experiment, the authorfound there existed significant differences between the EC and CC on writing total scores andso it was with four aspects. Therefore, it is found that the the application of the imitationwriting teaching can improve students’ writing proficiency a lot in the aspect of organization,lexis, content and grammar.
Secondly, imitation writing method based on the memetics can be seen as an effectiveway to reduce students’ writing anxiety especially in the aspect of somatic anxiety, avoidancebehavior and cognitive anxiety. The author proved it mainly by quantitative analysis of thewriting anxiety questionnaire. Before the experiment, the data showed that students in EC andCC all experienced medium-high level of general writing anxiety. Among them, theircognitive and somatic anxieties were at the medium-high level and their avoidance behavioreven reached high anxiety level. What’s more, the author found that there was no significantdifference between the EC and CC either on general writing anxiety or on the three aspects.That is to say, students in the two classes had the same writing anxiety in the aspect ofsomatic anxiety, avoidance behavior and cognitive anxiety, which established a scientificfoundation for the author to conduct the following experiment. During the experiment, the ECreceived the imitation writing method based on memetics while a traditional product writingmethod was adopted in the CC. After the experiment, the data in post-questionnaire showedstudents in EC reduced their writing anxiety to a medium-low level in the aspect of cognitiveand somatic anxiety and low anxiety in the aspect of avoidance behavior. However, studentsin CC didn’t have great changes like those in EC. In addition, through the independentT-samples tests, the author found there existed significant difference between the EC and CCon writing anxiety and so did the three aspects. Therefore, it is indicated that the theapplication of the imitation writing teaching can reduce students’ writing anxiety in the aspectof somatic anxiety, avoidance behavior and cognitive anxiety obviously.
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