Design And Practice Of The High School Language Electives

This thesis adopted the "action research" method in order to provide a thorough discription and analysis into my senior school elective Chinese courses. The research focuses on the nature, function and features of senior school elective Chinese courses, in the hope of accumulating practical experience for the design and application of senior school elective Chinese courses, discovering general, regulatory methods and processes directing the elective Chinese courses design and practice within the operational level, and thus summarizing the principles and methods for the design of senior school elective Chinese courses.This thesis first introduced the failure cases of the 1997 elective course "Appreciation of the Tang Poetry" and the 2001 elective course "Introduction to the foreign literature". With a presentation of the underlying cases It arrived at such a conclusion: It is unrealistic to use elective courses as the supplement to compulsory courses without the knowledge of the students' personal interests and the necessity of class motivation; it is also impossible to build a new system ignorant of the existing students' need and students' studying capacity, because such kinds of elective courses, though "interesting" at first sight, actually provide little benefits to the students progress.It is on such a basis that I took advantage of my successful elective course in the year of 2002, "Classical Literature Allusions", to introduce and analyze the procedures and then state my theory that a successful elective class on the topic of "classical allusions" lies in the three key features of "interesting, practical, and benefits": The students' interests and needs is the strongest impulsive force to the successful design and application of the "classical allusion" class; It is a practical method to start from the contents that the students are familiar with and then advance gradually to a broader and deeper level of study; Development of multiple class resources is a critical reason for the abundance of class contents; The best approach to reach the teaching objective for a "classical allusion" course is to lead and encourage the students to participate actively and research wholeheartedly.Meanwhile, the thesis stressed the necessity of a further look into the teaching dimensions both in the horizontal and vertical level. The "classical allusions" elective courses refer to a wide range of topics including "allusions with reference to the textbook, historical allusions, tourism allusions, birth allusions, loyalty allusions, traditional holidays allusions, classical music allusions, idioms allusions" etc. However, it is not the amazing range of topics in the horizontal level that attracts the students but the vertical level of class contents depth and the fun that lies in the hunt for knowledge. An elective course is an expansion and development to the compulsory courses. It is an independent course with considerable depth and broad range of resources customized with topics. A successful elective course should excel a compulsory course.