An Empirical Study on Prefabricated Chunk Acquisition from a Memetic Perspective in College English Writing

Fei Yan Wu^*

• Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin, China

Guided by memetics and prefabricated chunk theory, we developed a chunk-based teaching method in order to redesign traditional college English writing classes. The teaching procedures were formulated according to the life cycle of language memes: assimilation, memory, expression and transmission. As for the teaching content, four categories of prefabricated chunks comprised the teaching content. Eighty-two non-English major freshmen voluntarily participated from six disciplines across two colleges. Over an eight-month experimental period, participants were evenly divided into two classes: the treatment class and the control class. The treatment class was taught using the prefabricated chunk teaching method, while the control class was taught using the traditional grammar teaching method.Three pairs of writing and lexical tests were conducted as pretests, mid-tests and post-tests in two classes to check the teaching improvement. Descriptive analyses revealed significantly greater improvement in both writing and lexical test performance for the treatment class versus the control class. Correlative analysis indicated that student's writing scores were in positive high correlation with that of lexical tests (r>0.8). Besides, high-proficiency students exhibited superior chunk acquisition and grammatical accuracy during later instructional phases, whereas mid-proficiency students demonstrated more pronounced early-stage chunk gains.Moreover, poly words in students' compositions displayed a more remarkable growth in number and accuracy than that of the other three categories of chunks, which was also consistent with the results of questionnaire survey and interview. The growth rate of institutionalized expressions was the lowest of the four. The performance gap between classes widened significantly over time, demonstrating the efficacy of the prefabricated chunk methodology. Still, suitable changes and suggestions were summarized to improve and promote the teaching efficiency in accordance with the classroom context.