The Annotation Study Of Lu Xun’s Literature Works In Junior High Chinese Textbooks

Lu Xun’s literature works have always been playing an important role in junior high Chinese textbooks; however, the outcome of teaching and learning Lu Xun’s literature works is not as satisfying as we have expected. The teachers have difficulty in teaching Lu Xun’s works, on the flip side, the students have trouble to comprehend them. How to lower the bar for both teachers and students in teaching and learning his works? After going through the annotations in different editions of textbooks, I came to realize that most annotations are merely explanations of words themselves oblivious of the cultural background, which does no good for students to have a deep understanding of Lu Xun’s works, and it also adds no value to the annotations themselves.This paper consists of five parts:The preface, the first chapter, the second chapter, the third chapter as well as the final conclusion. The preface introduces the background of the research, the purpose of the research and the theory concerning to this research. The first chapter presents Lu Xun’s literature works that have been selected in the textbooks since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and it also introduces the text where annotations is essential in Lu Xun’s works to show the importance of the annotations. The second chapter compares the annotations of Lu Xun’s works in the edition of Chinese textbook and the edition of Chinese textbook for Jiangsu, analyzes the differences of annotations in both two editions, and then summarizes the rules of writing annotations as well as advocates the value of them. The third chapter demonstrates the value of annotations in Lu Xun’s works from the edition of Chinese textbook in following aspects:words and languages, the background of works, historical facts and quotes. And it also shows the shortcomings in three ways when the author who writes the annotations add no annotation in some text, miss adding annotations and adding wrong annotations. The final chapter sums up how to write annotations for Vernacular Chinese in textbooks and how to make full use of those annotations when teaching Lu Xun’s works.However, to fully understand Lu Xun’s works, one can’t throw all eggs in the annotation basket. The annotation is just a means to help students clear all the obstacles in the way of reading, a method to get to know the text better. To do a good job, one must sharpen his tools first, which clearly says that the efficiency has something to do with the tools. As a useful tool facilitates our work, in this case, the annotation is a tool to help better comprehend the text. How to make the annotation more understandable for students? How to enlighten students with the annotation? To answer these questions, we have to take student’s cognitive level into consideration. All in all, what subjects should be annotated and how to make the annotation more easily acceptable to student should be based on students’ present knowledge level as well as aimed at ratcheting up their cognitive level in the first place.