Research On The Teaching Of High School Novels From The Perspective Of Narratology

As a popular literary genre,the novel has a silent influence on students’ thoughts and behaviour,and has an unmistakable role in enhancing their core language literacy.As a genre with the most obvious narrative features,it is only natural to use narrative theory to teach fiction.Narratology is the study of the presentation of narrative texts,i.e.the narrative style and techniques of discourse.The elements included in narratology: narrative perspective is the point of view from which the narrator or characters view and understand the story,i.e.the ’location’ from which the narrator tells the story;narrative structure,on the other hand,contains both the surface and deep structure of the text;narrative texts generally contain two kinds of time,one is the original or chronological time of the story being narrated i.e.the time when the story actually takes place.Narrative space refers to an area of activity,or a place where different ’places’ come together to form a narrative.These are all important entry points for teaching high school fiction.However,the novel is currently taught in the high school classroom in the traditional format of ’three elements of the novel + theme’,which has not been improved even after the implementation of the new curriculum and the unified version of the textbook.A survey of the current situation of novel teaching in high schools reveals specific problems: homogeneous teaching models of teachers,lagging subject theories,lack of interest of students in learning novels,and misguided learning methods.The main reasons for this are the old-fashioned nature of the teaching philosophy,the utilitarian nature of the values,and the heavy teaching and learning tasks.As a result,there is an urgent need to introduce narrative theory into the teaching of high school novels.Based on the new curriculum standards,this study proposes specific strategies for teaching high school novels,taking into account the novel layout of the unified version of the high school language textbook: identifying the omniscient and limited narrative perspectives in novels,which often lead to new interpretations;analysing the narrative structure of novels,grasping the true meaning of novels from the double-line structure and uncovering profound connotations from the metaphorical structure;understanding the narrative time of novels,searching for the meaning of novels’ flashbacks,and tracing the meaning of novels at the time limit of narratives.The course also focuses on the narrative space of the novel,analysing the characters’ images in a specific space and exploring the connotations of the text in a metaphorical space.At the same time,examples of relevant practical applications are given,and specific teaching designs for The Blessing and Unit 6 of the compulsory second volume of the Unified Edition of the senior secondary language are developed to further illustrate the operability of the teaching strategies.Teachers should pay attention to the need to respect the students’ subject and adapt to their cognitive level when conducting teaching practice;to select appropriate angles for analysis in relation to the novel text;and to make methodological links without limiting themselves to a single theory.In this way,a deeper integration of narrative theory and high school novel teaching can be better achieved.