A model essay on British and American literature 1: Diversified teaching methods and significance of British and American literature Since 1953, English literature courses have been offered to English majors in colleges and universities for nearly 60 years. As the main course of senior English majors, British and American literature plays an important role in the whole curriculum system. The Teaching Syllabus for English Majors in Colleges and Universities promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 2000 stipulates that the purpose of literature courses is to cultivate students' ability to read, appreciate and understand English original works, master the basic knowledge and methods of literary criticism, promote students' basic language skills and humanistic quality through reading and analyzing British and American literary works, and enhance students' understanding of western literature and culture. It can be seen that literature teaching plays an important role in improving students' language ability and comprehensively improving students' humanistic quality. It takes some time to cultivate students' "inner" temperament in English and American literature class, which requires students to actively participate in the class, study classics quietly after class and absorb the wealth of humanistic knowledge. However, with the penetration of commodity economy into every corner of society and the rapid rise of network culture, college students pay more and more attention to practical courses such as oral English, business English, tourism English and their fast food culture on the network, and social orientation makes students more and more disdainful to spend time studying classic literature. The author has made a survey in six universities of science and engineering in our province. The results show that only 8% of the students surveyed can read literary classics in their spare time, while 62% of the students give priority to books such as speech skills, communication skills and entrepreneurial secrets. In this context, literature teaching has also encountered many difficulties, and even some colleges and universities have compressed British and American literature courses in order to cater to this trend in society, making British and American literature courses show a trend of marginalization. Many famous linguists think that the current language majors have good oral expression ability, but their internal cultivation quality is poor, and they don't know much about the thoughts, values, customs and culture of the language countries they study. Students have almost become machines of language and translation. In order to effectively stimulate students' interest in English and American literature courses and give full play to the teaching and educating functions of English and American literature, many scholars have conducted fruitful investigations on the current situation of English and American literature teaching in colleges and universities. Based on the results of previous investigation reports on English and American literature teaching, this paper puts forward a diversified compound teaching method of English and American literature, which can not only effectively improve the quality of classroom teaching, stimulate students' love for English and American literature courses, but also improve students' comprehensive quality and critical thinking ability. It further discusses the significance of the compound teaching method of English and American literature and its traditional "four-paragraph theory"
First, the "four-paragraph theory" of British and American literature teaching methods
Professor Cheng Aimin, a scholar of British and American literature in Nanjing Normal University, made an investigation into the teaching methods of British and American literature in China. The survey shows that most teachers of British and American literature still follow the traditional teaching mode, that is, they only pay attention to teachers' explanations and have low requirements for students' participation. To talk about a writer or a work, we should first start with the background of the times and the writer's life, followed by the ideological content and artistic characteristics of the work. This four-stage programmed teaching method, which is based on the background of the times, the writer's life, the ideological content of the works and the artistic characteristics, basically takes the teaching materials as the key link, that is, teachers mainly arrange the teaching progress according to the teaching plan according to the development process of the history of British and American literature in class; The teaching method basically divides the history of British and American literature into several main stages according to the development process of British and American literature. In class, the teacher first introduces the literary background and overall literary characteristics of a certain historical stage, and then introduces and explains the writer's life, creative experience and main literary works one by one. And explain the selection of representative works of writers in the textbook. In class, teachers will also ask questions to students, but the number of questions is small, mainly because teachers explain on the podium and students listen in their seats. This kind of "spoon-feeding" rather than "heuristic" teaching method can easily make the classroom atmosphere more boring, leading to the teacher singing a monologue on the podium, but the students under the podium can't really integrate into the teacher's explanation. Teaching English and American literature in this way can hardly have a great influence on students. This single "four-paragraph theory" programmed teaching has its forming background. At the moment when multimedia teaching has not been widely popularized in China University, English and American literature teaching still relies on traditional classroom blackboard teaching, so it is difficult for English and American literature teachers to rely on teaching hardware to provide students with a lot of relevant information. In view of the short class hours of British and American literature, it is impossible to spare too much time for discussion in class, so this "cramming" teaching method is inevitable.
Second, the British and American literature multiple compound teaching method
Li Funing, a doctoral supervisor in Peking University, said: British and American literature belongs to the category of humanities, and its goal is to cultivate learners' humanistic spirit, improve their cultural literacy and quality, establish a sense of social responsibility, and cultivate foreign language talents with both ability and political integrity. Literary works are essentially records of the author's experience, feelings and thoughts on life and society, and readers' understanding of literary works can only be realized through integrated communication &; Mdash& ampmdash Only by integrating personal experience into the author's world and communicating with the author can it be realized. Therefore, literature teachers should inspire and guide students more, stimulate their psychological feelings and enthusiasm for participation, rather than just leading the classroom with thorough explanations instead of students' thinking. In view of the important role of British and American literature teaching in English learning, in the teaching process, teachers should attract students with humanistic ideas, wisdom and charm that can be seen everywhere in British and American literature masterpieces, give full play to the inherent advantages and potential of British and American literature teaching, activate the effectiveness of literature classes, and use various flexible teaching methods to achieve their teaching objectives. Based on the above analysis, the author believes that in order to realize the diversification and compounding of British and American literature teaching, the following elements should be integrated into the actual teaching of British and American literature.
(A) British and American literature "interactive" teaching model.
From the above analysis, it is not difficult to see that the shortcoming of the traditional "four-paragraph theory" English and American literature teaching model is the lack of creativity and interaction. The whole teaching process is one-way, and it is difficult to form effective interaction between teachers and students. Therefore, it is imperative to introduce "interactive" teaching mode into English and American literature classroom teaching. Interactive teaching method is a creative teaching theory and strategy first put forward by American educator Palincsar in 1982. Different from the traditional teacher-centered teaching method, interactive teaching method always puts students at the center of learning, allows students to participate in the whole process of teaching activities and truly becomes the main body of teaching activities. At the same time, the interactive teaching method also emphasizes that teachers should be placed in the leading position of teaching, so as to realize the two-way benign exchange and interaction between teachers and students, students and students, and students and teaching materials. In short, the interactive teaching method is to take the interaction between teachers and students as a bridge, abandon the cramming teaching brought by teachers' "centralized teaching", and form a three-dimensional information exchange and transmission among teachers, students, textbooks and media in the teaching of British and American literature. Because classroom teaching is mainly about transferring knowledge and information, when using interactive teaching method, we can't ignore teaching objectives for classroom activities. The following principles should be followed when the interactive teaching method is used in the classroom teaching of British and American literature: First, the principle of focusing on teaching difficulties. As a main course, British and American literature contains many key points and difficulties that students can't understand. In teaching, students should be guided to explore the difficult problems in teaching with the focus of teaching as the axis and the solution of difficulties as the line, and teachers, students and students should cooperate with each other to find effective solutions. The teacher's role is to grasp the classroom all the time along the established design, so as to avoid ignoring the treatment of key points and difficulties in literature teaching because of interaction. The second is the principle of building an open classroom. Open classroom is a sustainable classroom. Through strategic guidance, interest and emotional stimulation, teachers make students take learning knowledge as a manifestation of their own needs. It is of great significance for students to experience the author's world outlook and values in literary masterpieces by organizing group cooperative inquiry, experiential learning and personalized learning, which can effectively solve the problem of insufficient integration and communication between students and authors. The third is practical principles. In teaching practice, through classroom teaching practice, English scenes consistent with the teaching content are set up, so that students can improve their basic skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing in the process of appreciating and analyzing English original works. The interactive teaching method of British and American literature can give full play to students' subjective initiative in the learning process and guide them to draw their own conclusions. If a thousand people read Hamlet, there will be a thousand Hamlets. Every literary work is open. Students don't like teachers to impose their will and understanding on themselves. They prefer to gain their own understanding and opinions through reading. For example, when studying Faulkner's short story A Rose for Emily, the author adopted the following methods to practice the interactive teaching method. First of all, let the students prepare the relevant materials of writer Faulkner after class and show them in class. According to the relevant materials prepared by the students, the teacher further explores the theme of Faulkner's works that the students can't perceive generally: the punishment for evil will always be presented to future generations in some form. Then the teacher gives several thinking questions about the plot, characters and theme, so that students can read the whole novel with questions. Finally, let the students express their opinions and express their opinions on the novel, mainly focusing on why Miss Emily killed her lover and why the author named the topic "A rose for Emily", but there is no rose image in the whole text. Finally, according to the students' speeches, the teacher further summarized how the novel grasped the consistent theme of Faulkner's novels. In this process of teacher-student interaction, students' understanding of the novel is much deeper than that of the teacher alone. Through the exertion of students' subjective initiative, boring literature classes will become rich and colorful, and students' interest in literature classes will become stronger and stronger.
(B) the use of computer network environment to assist the teaching of British and American literature
From the perspective of learning theory, constructivism learning theory is an important theoretical source of English and American literature teaching mode based on computer network. Constructivism provides a learning theory different from traditional objectivism. This learning theory holds that cognition is not a passive, simple and superficial reflection of the subject to the object, but a deepening, active and deep construction process, that is, all knowledge meanings are actively constructed through the internal representation process. At the same time, learning environment plays an important role in the process of knowledge construction, and constructivist learning theory emphasizes providing good external conditions for discipline construction. These ideas are embodied in the teaching practice of British and American literature based on computer network. First of all, images, sounds and videos of computer networks can mobilize students' visual and auditory organs, and fully stimulate and tap students' intuitive thinking and participation consciousness. A picture can contain hundreds or even thousands of words, while a movie video contains more content, and students can understand the whole content of a novel in only two hours. Secondly, one of the characteristics of information media is its extensibility and interactivity. Students can make hypertext links through the Internet, search a lot of information related to British and American literature, and further deepen their understanding. In addition, students can get evaluation and feedback in the process of selecting, extracting and publishing information, which makes students actively participate in the learning process of discovering and summarizing the inherent laws in literature. This kind of participation and cognition can actively mobilize students' potential and cultivate students' autonomous learning strategies. At present, the class hours of British and American literature are limited, and teachers are not allowed to present all the teaching contents in the classroom. Through computer network and other multimedia technologies, teachers can effectively extend the class hours of British and American literature, thus alleviating the contradiction of complicated teaching contents and limited class hours. At the same time, students' autonomous learning and self-management ability can also be effectively cultivated.
(C) the construction of three-dimensional teaching content
The pluralistic and compound teaching method of British and American literature will also bring about a revolution in teaching content. At present, English and American literature courses in many schools adopt the mode of "literary history" and "selected paragraphs" In addition to telling literary historical facts according to the "four-paragraph theory", the teacher will supplement some literary reading materials as a supplement, and there is basically no other content. Howard, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, USA&; Bull; Gardner believes that if we can have a comparative understanding of the development of literature and art in the same period, we can grasp the cultural spirit of that period as a whole; If we can master the spirit of different periods and the symbols presented by different arts, we can enter the speculative process of the formation of works and have a broader understanding of humanistic spirit, which is no longer limited to the level of words. In this sense, it is of great significance to introduce interdisciplinary content into literature teaching to expand students' thinking and improve their humanistic spirit. Therefore, in the course of British and American literature, if teachers can combine the knowledge and content of social, artistic, cultural and other related disciplines with the relevant content of literature according to the teaching content, they can stimulate students' more willingness to learn and stimulate their potential. For example, to read American colonial literature, we must understand Puritanism in the religious field; Without understanding the theory of "original sin", it is difficult to understand the theme of Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. If you don't understand the irrational philosophy in the west, you won't have a deep understanding of the absurd literature and other literary works in the west; Without understanding Freud's Oedipus Complex, it is difficult to deeply understand Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. In addition, to construct three-dimensional teaching content, we must pay attention to the combination of literature and history and its philosophy. According to the classification of today's disciplines, literature and history have become the main body of humanities, while philosophy is a general study that transcends all disciplines, so there is also a trinity of literature, history and philosophy. Although literature, history and philosophy have their own characteristics, in short, philosophy is most concerned about life and death, history should describe tragic, and literature should express love and hate, but the three are in the same strain. Therefore, when studying literary works, we can make full use of students' existing basic knowledge of history and philosophy to link relevant history with philosophical common sense and stimulate students' interest in literature.
Third, the significance of English and American literature teaching methods.
Through the study of British and American literature, students actually get a feeling and experience of the world and life, and cultivate their closeness and awe of any life discipline. It is not only a science, but also an attitude towards the world. Teachers can use diversified and compound teaching methods to provide students with a broad space for free development and give full play to their initiative, enthusiasm and creativity. By actively participating in the teaching of British and American literature, students have developed the habit of positive thinking and expression. By actively reading the original works of British and American literature, they can understand British and American literature and culture, improve their literary criticism and appreciation ability and English level, and their analytical and speculative abilities are also improved accordingly in this process.
Learning English and American literature can not only improve students' language ability and cognitive level, but also cultivate students' healthy and noble moral and aesthetic values and improve students' humanistic quality, because literary works have irreplaceable appeal and educational functions. By studying and analyzing the truth, goodness, beauty, falsehood, ugliness and ugliness in works, we can guide students to form a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values, and cultivate students' ability to understand and solve problems, which will help college students cultivate their sentiments, expand their minds and enhance their ideological realm. In this sense, the pluralistic and compound teaching method of British and American literature really provides an important platform for humanistic quality education in colleges and universities and plays a key role in cultivating college students' comprehensive quality.
English and American Literature Model II: English and American Literature Teaching and College Students' Quality Cultivation. Due to the influence of "utilitarianism" and "pragmatism" in the current society, many English majors hold an exclusive attitude towards the setting of literature courses, thinking that literature courses have no practical value and will not help them find jobs in the future, thus denying the significance of literature courses. Indeed, the characteristics of literature education itself determine that it cannot produce immediate effect in a short time, and it is a long-term subtle nourishment. As Professor Yu Jianhua said, "Literature is a discipline &; Lsquo Zhi Zhi rsquo theme. A truly valuable literary work, through the artistic feedback experience of language, provides an observation window for understanding society and people themselves, and its influence is not direct, but far-reaching; Not material, but spiritual; It is not obvious, but subtle and ubiquitous. " If the school overemphasizes the practicality of English learning, it will lead to students' poor thinking, locked minds, lack of imagination and creativity, and the overall quality of students will inevitably decline.
First, literature education and its significance
Literature education is different from language education, but it is interdependent with language education. The purpose of language education is to cultivate students' language application ability, which has strong instrumental characteristics. British and American literature education is to cultivate students' literary appreciation ability, literary taste and sound personality on the basis of English language ability. Literature has the intrinsic value of soothing the soul, cultivating sentiment, shaping great personality and opening up human spiritual space. Literature education provides students with meaningful and charming language input, and impresses them with beautiful English and American literary texts, thus helping them to shape their unique personalities, cultivate the spirit of cultural tolerance, and improve their appreciation, thinking, imagination and innovation. Yang Shuzi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that "humanistic culture has an important basic position, which is related to the survival of the nation, the strength of the country, the advancement and retreat of society, the level of personality, the depth of cultivation, the intellectual weakness of thinking, and the success or failure of the cause." Our humanistic quality education for students is to internalize the outstanding cultural achievements of human beings into students' personality, temperament and cultivation through the imparting of knowledge and the edification of the environment, and become the relatively stable internal character of human beings. Literature has played an indispensable role in the process of inheriting culture and civilization. Literature involves a wide range of subjects, and its value in expressing enlightenment and reflecting on life is irreplaceable by any other research. As far as the long-term development of individuals and the long-term interests of the nation are concerned, although literature education is time-consuming and laborious, it is a far-reaching humanistic project aimed at improving the overall quality of the nation.
Second, the teaching reform of British and American literature
At present, British and American literature courses have few class hours, the teaching content is not rich and systematic, and the teaching method is single. In order to better cultivate students' quality through literature education, we must explore ways to reform the teaching of British and American literature.
1, adjust the teaching hours
With the development of modern educational technology, language skills courses such as listening, speaking and reading, which traditionally rely on teachers to lead students to practice in class, can now reduce class hours with the help of computer and network technology, and adopt the teaching method of combining teachers' classroom guidance, supervision, inspection and students' self-practice, thus freeing up teaching time for literature teaching. Literature courses can be advanced to the second year of college and run through the last three years of college, so that students' humanistic quality and basic English skills will be greatly improved.
2. Increase the teaching of "literary criticism theory"
Unfortunately, "literary criticism theory" rarely appears in English major courses at present. The topics involved in literary texts are complex, in-depth and colorful, and there is no fixed answer. Literature teaching is not to find all kinds of authoritative or correct explanations, but to provide students with a place to read and think. Teachers should encourage students to learn personalized reading and cultivate independent thinking ability. In this process, literature teaching should have an impact on students' wisdom, and the study of literary criticism theory can play a great role. In the 20th century, various new literary criticism theories emerged constantly, and we saw Marxist criticism, reader-reflected criticism, structuralism, structuralism and post-colonialism. These literary criticism theories have subverted the traditional teaching content and mode of literary classics. Literary theory can make us read classic works in a completely different way, and make us realize that classic writers are much more complicated than we used to know.
3. Reform the teaching mode
The traditional teacher-centered teaching mode pays attention to the one-way teaching of professional knowledge, and students' enthusiasm, initiative and practical ability are not strong. Classroom teaching should combine teachers' teaching and guidance, pre-class group preview and classroom special discussion to effectively realize teacher-student interaction. By arranging open research tasks, teachers let students complete independent inquiry learning with questions in a cooperative way. Students search the library and network resources, and analyze, compare, select, choose and process the obtained materials. This is a process of trying to explore and actively construct meaning. Teachers are helpers in meaning construction, that is, helping students learn the ability to think and solve problems independently. Teachers can also use multimedia facilities and video resources to increase students' interest in learning, or call on students to use their imagination to adapt works according to famous works and perform on stage.
4. Reform the evaluation model.
The traditional student evaluation model mainly examines the amount of knowledge that students have mastered, and the ability evaluation link is weak. Attention should be paid to the assessment and process evaluation of students' comprehensive quality. In the evaluation process, the evaluation subjects should be diversified, including teachers, peers and students themselves; The assessment methods should be varied, including paper test, extracurricular study, class report, group defense, PPT production, course paper writing and so on.
British and American literature papers and essays;
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4. Essays with literary literacy.
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