Difficulties And Breakthroughs Of Chinese Classical Novel’s Teaching In Secondary School

As a treasure of Chinese literary repository, Chinese classical novel is the carrier of China’s splendid culture and the crystallization of human wisdom. It holds a very high rank in Chinese even in world literary history. Learning classical novels can not only broaden one’s horizon, but also cultivate his mind, which has great significance in improving students’ability of learning Chinese and their literary attainments. However, with the development of entertaining, relaxing popular culture, thick classical novel has got into a difficult situation, gradually losing its popularity among secondary school students since they read so little in this field. What’s worse, in our traditional teaching, the percentage of Chinese classical novel in textbooks and exams is so little that it possesses such a petty place, in addition with the reason of examination-oriented education and the uneven level of teachers’own literary accomplishment, classical novel’s teaching has always been neglected and faced with embarrassment.Based on previous studies and situations of present students’reading classical novel and its teaching, this thesis is going to probe into the teaching of Chinese classical novels in secondary schools with four main researching methods:literature studies, statistical data, questionnaire investigation and case studies. There are five chapters in this paper. Chapter1is concerned with the value and status of classical novel’s teaching. Its value mainly lies in inheriting and passing on national culture, enhancing students’Chinese cultivation and offering a way to derive nutrition from Chinese culture; while its status will be studied primarily from perspectives of textbooks and exams. By taking secondary school textbook edited by education department in Jiangsu Province and that edited by People’s Educational Press as examples, the paper gives a statistical analysis of the two editions’ collection of selected Chinese classical novels to find its low status in Chinese textbooks. Meanwhile, we also statistically analyze the latest ten years’exam papers of high school entrance examination of Changsha, college entrance examination of Hunan and the whole nation. Chapter2is going to analyze the problems existed in Chinese classical novel’s teaching in secondary schools. The problems include its going utilization, pattern settled and Chinese-deviation, and then we will look into these problems from three aspects, namely the influence of instructions of college entrance examination, the shock of popular culture to the reading of classical novel and the uneven level of the teachers’ literary and educational cultivation. Chapter3presents our thoughts and expectations for strategies of teaching Chinese classical novels in secondary schools. In this part we will put forward three assumptions: enhancing the status of classical novel’s teaching, altering teaching concepts and carrying out elective courses for classical novels, hoping to provide reference and help for future classical novel’s teaching. Chapter4discusses innovation and breakthroughs of teaching methods:a) set up circumstances to experience the atmosphere; b) interchange roles to understand each other’s feelings; c) base on the reality to realize fiction; d) arrange performance to gain a real experience. The paper tries to break traditional boring, mechanical teaching methods and models to make innovations on teaching contents and strategies, to focus on developing students’subjectivity and comprehensive literary cultivation and to investigate effective teaching methods of classical novels. The last chapter gives design and evaluation of teaching cases with a case study of 《Major Lu Pummels the lord of the West》, attempting to offer relative reference for teaching classical novels in secondary schools and to improve the quality of Chinese teaching.