Chapter One Introduction
1.1. Background of the Research
Literary works are the essence of human’s thoughts and culture in history, which are not only the significant certificate of historic recorder, but one of the best materials for people to learn intelligence of former people. The item, British and American literary works, refers to high-quality English literary works written by British or American writers, which are used as learning materials for English learning.
With the increasing number of international communication in China, English has received unprecedented attention. However, many students learning English for more than ten years still fail to communicate in English fluently or understand original English articles accurately, which results in terrible performance in their English study, as well as their exams. The reason for this situation is that students reading ability has not been fully developed. With lower reading ability, their other language abilities have been badly influenced.
As the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China decreed the English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School (2017), good solutions are able to be found in it. In the New Curriculum, students should complete compulsory courses and optional courses. Compulsory courses aim to build the common base of the core competences of English. In the extracurricular reading, students must read at least 1,500 words per week and read 45,000 words totally in their compulsory course period. While in their optional course period, students have to read more difficulty materials with larger vocabulary in their extracurricular reading, at least 2,500 words per week and 100,000 words totally. In order to arouse students’ interests and make students experience a sense of success in reading and learning English, teachers can choose some simple and interesting original English literary works for traditional English reading class, which also meet some of the requirements mentioned in the New Curriculum. British and American literary works, written in native language, are typical, classical and lively. They are the best language materials of developing students reading ability. In the process of reading, students will be exposed to such large vocabulary, different structures and cultures that students’ ability of reading, discourse analysis, and cultural awareness will be improved. With vivid language, attractive plots and profound thoughts, students will take great interests in reading these types of English materials. At the same time, the purpose of developing the core competences of English will be achieved.
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1.2. The Significance of the Research
With the requirements of reading in the New curriculum, British and American literary works reading can supply enough meaningful reading materials. This research started from the reading interests of students, making students learning English actively. Meanwhile, the research helped students to choose proper British and American literary works, changing the status of textbook, to supply the textbook with more literary works for language study. With the context from literary works reflecting the social background at that time, culture in Britain and American, students experienced western history and culture easily. By reading tasks and activities designed, students acquired language knowledge, master structures so that their overall language abilities, especially reading ability, were improved. This research is good for checking whether British and American literary works reading is helpful in English reading.
ow to guide senior high school students to read British and American literary works to improve their language abilities, even the core competences of English. It is to study how to choose British and American literary works, the learning activities, as well as evaluation of reading. In former studies, English literary reading teaching mainly focus on the connection between English literary works and some literary excerpts on English textbooks. Most of complete English literary works reading was only applied to the students in key senior high schools. The research was carried out among the students with average English level in ordinary schools, which is an effective supplement to former studies, in order to promote British and American literary works reading in all senior high schools.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1. Overseas Studies
In western countries, literary works play a big role in foreign language teaching. Teachers made use of literary works to develop students’ ability of language from the 19th century. Some authorities believe that literature teaching is for language teaching. However, with the promotion of Constructivism teaching mode and audio-visual teaching mode, the status of literature in foreign language teaching became weaker. In the middle of 1980s, literary works was brought in for foreign language teaching.
Western researchers have done a large number of studies in the field of theories of literature and language teaching, which mainly focus on the influence of literary works reading on foreign language learning. Marie Gilroy and Brian Parkinson (1996), who made an experiment about teaching literary works among low-level language learners, found that literature is helpful for low-level learners to improve their English. Ghosn, I (2002), after studying the influence of teaching literary works in primary school, points out that literature is a good resource of accurate diction, diverse sentence patterns, and passionate narratives. Carter, R (2010) claims the importance of selecting appropriate literary works according to learners’ different language levels. These studies stress the improvement of language ability and skills brought by literary works reading. Literary works are useful language learning resources, which provide learners with a large amount of vocabulary, sentence patterns, and enables students to know rich textual structure. Language learning in the real context created by literary works can help language learners learn more native expression and develop their English mode of thinking. With high quality language input, language learners will be positively influenced.
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2.2. Domestic Studies
In China, from the beginning of foreign language teaching of our country in Qing Dynasty, former English learners made use of classical English literary works as reading materials to study English. People learn English as a significant tool to communicate with the world, regardless of its ideological level and humanistic significance. However, separated from culture and literature, the worth of English is underestimated, which hampers further culture exchanges and opening to the outside world. Nowadays, it’s a common sense that English learning should not be isolated from literature and culture. Some studies on the influences of English literary works in English teaching have been widely carried out in China, contributing to many excellent results.
Selected Readings of British & American Literature, a subject of English major, has been widely taught and accepted in college, while it is only an attempt in senior high school. After English Curriculum Standards (2003) was released, many postgraduate students and teachers put forward the idea that British and American English literary works should be made the best as teaching resources, according to the requirements that extracurricular reading of senior high school students should be over 300,000 words, which led to a large number of empirical researches.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Basis .................................... 12
3.1. Humanistic Education Theory .................................. 12
3.2. The Input Hypothesis ......................................... 14
3.3. Schema Theory ..................................... 16
Chapter Four Research Methodology .......................................... 19
4.1. Research Questions ................................ 19
4.2. Subjects ................................... 19
4.3. Research Methods ........................................ 20
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ....................................... 40
5.1. The Improvements of Students’ Reading Proficiency ................................ 40
5.1.1. Results from Analysis of the Pre-test ............................. 40
5.1.2. Results from Analysis of the Post-test ............................ 42
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1. The Improvements of Students’ Reading Proficiency
5.1.1. Results from Analysis of the Pre-test
The pre-test is in the first English exam for students after they entered the senior high school. The students who are admitted to the school are just above the basic line of Senior High School Entrance Examination. Among the students, some are good at English and got high score in the Senior High School Entrance Examination, while some failed the English exam although other subjects were not bad. Most of the students are at an average level. Considering most of the students hadn’t read or done any English exercises during the 3-month summer holiday, the pre-test was held one month after the start of new semester. During the first month, the students mainly reviewed some basic knowledge combining with that in senior high schools, getting into good habits of studying English and getting to know the ways to read British and American literary works. The exercises in pre-test are nothing like those in the English exam of Senior High School Entrance Examination. The length of article and the types of exercises are in reference to the English exam of College Entrance Examination.
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Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1. Major Findings
reference(omitted)