An Investigation On The Feasibility Of Providing English Literature Optional Course In Senior High Schools

In April of2003, the Ministry of Education issued New English Curriculum Standards for Common Senior High School (experimental), in which the concept of optional course was raised and meanwhile requirement that course mode should be combination of compulsory and optional course was also proposed. When it comes to optional course, literature appreciation is listed in the range of choices. However, in reality, few senior high schools offer literature optional course. What’s more, the prevalence of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) undermines the status and function of literature even in compulsory course. In view of this situation, the author deeply feels the necessity of offering literature teaching in English teaching. And on this occasion of optional course being recommended, the idea of providing that in the form of optional course occurs to the author. So, an investigation on the feasibility of providing English literature optional course was carried out in Xiangyang No.l Middle School.First of all, with the purpose of investigating students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards literature teaching and providing that as an optional course, the author designs questionnaires and conducts a survey among students and teachers. The result shows:(1) Students take considerable interests in English literature and support the establishment of literature optional course.(2) Teachers also express willingness to engage in English literature teaching.(3) There surely exist some barriers in the way of providing literature optional course, but teachers and students believe they can be overcome with their joint efforts. All this proves the feasibility of the author’s idea.To further test the feasibility, the author, based on the pedagogical implications concluded from the pre-questionnaires, conducts a teaching experiment of opening literature optional course. After the nearly three-month experiment, it shows that students benefit a lot from literature optional courses. For example, their interests are stimulated; language comprehensive abilities are improved; aesthetical taste and moral level are enhanced, etc. This demonstrates the significance of literature teaching in language teaching, and further proves that it is not only feasible but also necessary to offer literature teaching.Undoubtedly, there are some limitations in this research. For example, the teaching experiment is very rough without pretest and posttest, experimental group and control group and it is conducted in a key middle school, etc. All this weakly convinces us of the effectiveness and popularity of this feasibility. However, this research is still of great theoretical and practical significance to understanding and implementation of the New English Curriculum Standards, and it has reference value for the schools about to provide such optional course in future.