The Study On How To Select And Edit Foreign Literary Works Of Chinese Textbooks In High And Middle School

Foreign literary works was, for the first time, selected and edited in Chinese textbooks of high and middle school in 1920s, and it has gone through a rough and bumpy road: from few to many, from low quality to high quality, from simplicity to variety, from instrumentality to humanity, from unconsciousness to consciousness, till to reach the requirements stipulated by the syllabus on the percentage and the amount of the selected works. This is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change. On the one hand, these selected works have altered the structure of the Chinese middle school textbooks, brought some fresh blood into Chinese text books, add new energy, broadened students' range of views, and made them acquire more foreign literary knowledge, perfected their structure of knowledge; on the other hand, the theme and characters in these foreign literary works have evoked young students' intense repercussion generation by generation, and thus contributed a lot to students" healthy growth in body and mind . Through specific and careful analysis into the selected works, this text aims at pointing out the achievements and shortcomings of the ways in selecting and arranging foreign literary works in current high and middle school's textbooks, and tries to establish a newer and more reasonable system of selection and arrangement in order to guarantee that the students can learn specific and useful knowledge in studying foreign literary works.The thesis consists of five parts.The first part sorts out the history and changes on the edition of the foreign literary works into Chinese textbooks, systematically recollects Chinese textbooks' history around the May 4th movement, after the founding of PRC and during the new period, and goes further into these works' great impacts upon youngChinese students. The second part summarizes, through careful study of two sets of national textbooks published by the People's Education Press respectively in 1983 and in 2000, that the major characteristic of the 1983 edition is "preference toRussian works" and its "excessive emphasis on realism", while the 2000 edition is characterized by is "colorful themes, types, and styles", and its "modernity", and has established a reasonable way of searching for foreign literary materials. The third part mainly analyses the two major problems, i.e. "lack of system and integrity", "much more essays and much less classic foreign literary works", and accordingly puts forward some bold ideas, suggestions and strategies for improvement. Judging from the needs of the three aspects such as the national situations, the education reform, students' knowledge structure. The fourth part inquires into the major purposes of selecting foreign works in middle school's Chinese textbooks, and thereby seeds out the six typical principles: system principle, typicalness principle, modernity principle, variety principle, attractiveness principle, acceptability principle. The fifth part proposes two assumptions on how to choose and arrange foreign literary works of Chinese textbooks in high and middle school in 21st century: one is according to the historical sequence of foreign literature, the other is according to the types of writing, and-tries to offer several practical methods for operation.