An Experimental Implementation Of Literature Teaching In Senior High Schools

In elementary foreign language education, the relationship between literature and language teaching remains a controversial issue both at home and abroad. The convention of literature teaching is inherited in Western foreign language teaching, and literature used to exert its great influence in Chinese foreign language education. However, with the Communicative Approach prevailing in our country, literature has been deprived of its due status and fades in terms of its impact. On this account, the author of this essay thinks it of great necessity to integrate literature into daily English classes. And how to conduct effective literature teaching is bound to be an important research subject in English education in the new century. Therefore, in this thesis, based on reviews of relevant research findings at home and abroad, the author adopts the methods of conducting surveys and implementing teaching experiments, aiming to explore the ways of restoring literature in senior high schools. Full use of literary materials should be made to help students master language skills flexibly, possess humanistic spirits and cultivate comprehensive qualities. In order to achieve the purposes of this research, the author undertakes a literature teaching experiment which lasts for four months in Wuhan No.2 Senior High School.To start with, questionnaire investigation is carried out among students in Senior Grade Two and the English teachers in Senior Grade One and Two, aimed to collect information in regard to the current situation of literature teaching and their attitudes towards it. The results of the questionnaires can be summarized into the following two points. Firstly, students show considerable interest in literature, but they are reluctant to do it for lack of confidence in their language skills as well as the enormous pressure from the National Matriculation Test. Secondly, English teachers display substantial willingness to conduct literature teaching. However, factors like the exam-oriented educational atmosphere, limitations of current textbooks and heavy working load all prevent them from carrying out literature teaching. This useful information has to some extent paved the way for the teaching experiment, informing the author of possible barriers and contributing to the effectiveness of the experiment. Then, two sequential English classes are set aside each week intended for literature teaching, which add up to sixteen weeks in a semester for the teaching experiment. Besides, to guarantee accuracy and validity of the research, a pre-test before the experiment and a post-test after the experiment are conducted to examine students’ basic language skills and literary knowledge. More significantly, according to the comparison made between students’ performances in the two tests, a conclusion can be made that literature benefits students in many aspects.By conducting the teaching experiment, the author finds that literature teaching helps to impart students a new understanding of English learning, thus stimulating their interest in English. Apart from that, literary works function as an excellent source of quality language input for students and a good medium to improve their moral levels and aesthetic competence, which all enrich students’ personalities. Therefore, literature plays a considerably significant role in language education, which further proves the necessity of developing and conducting literature teaching.Despite all the efforts the author has made in the course of this research, limitations are unavoidable. For example, the analyses of current textbooks are just targeted at the ones of People’s Education Press, there is no control group to be compared with the experimental group and the literature teaching experiment is carried out in a key senior high school. All these limitations in some way exert their influence on the effectiveness and universality of this research. However, this research is still of theoretical and practical importance to strengthening literature teaching in senior high schools and provides some reference ideas for English teachers and senior high schools.