The role of foreign literature elective courses in improving learning quality?

Based on the teaching practice of western literature history, this paper refines and discriminates ten key words in literature teaching in colleges and universities: off-script, humor, passion, performance, technology, reference, comparison, story, logic and soul. The first five keywords are about "how to speak" and the last five keywords are about "what to speak". Key words: ten key words of literature class "History of Western Literature" In colleges and universities, literature class is regarded as the best class. The emergence of this view is related to the characteristics of literature: literature, as a humanities, is closely related to people's real life and spiritual demands, so students like to listen to literature classes; As aesthetics, literature is vivid beyond majors, and students can easily understand literature classes. However, "good" does not mean "good". Whether the literature class can be "good" mainly depends on the teacher's own attitude and quality, and on his understanding and attainments in "what to say" and "how to say it". The author wants to talk about ten key words in literature teaching in colleges and universities based on his direct experience and understanding of lectures on the history of western literature. The first five keywords focus on "how to speak" and the last five keywords focus on "what to speak". First, for a teacher, being divorced from the lecture notes is not the highest requirement, but the most basic quality. Classroom teaching is the most taboo. In the "pre-multimedia era", scripted lectures meant reading textbooks or lectures. In the multimedia era, scripted lectures have added a new way: reading multimedia courseware. The reason why there is a situation of "teaching by the book" is that the teacher did not spend more time and thought on writing and memorizing the secret book of Wulin: personalized drawer lecture. Taking off the manuscript has laid a good foundation for the success of classroom teaching. Many successful teachers have one thing in common: completely off the script. After reading a good lecture, the effect will be greatly reduced, and students will have some doubts about your professional level and attitude. On the contrary, if the speech is poorly written, but blurted out, it will also win the respect and goodwill of students. They will feel that they have met a very dedicated teacher, and then they can give you 70 to 80 points in their hearts. In view of this understanding, no matter what kind of speeches I encounter, I try to recite them skillfully, such as Pushkin's poems, lines in Shakespeare's plays, monologues of characters in Leo Tolstoy's works, and the contents in The Book of Songs and Songs of the South that are based on China literature. When you don't have a lesson plan in your hand, eyes or even heart, you can naturally pursue a higher teaching realm. Second, it is important to recite the speech humorously, but we should also make the speech lively and colloquial. The difference between writing a paper and attending a class is that writing a paper is for reading and attending a class is for listening. People's vision is patient, but their hearing is critical. Therefore, writing a thesis is to promote life to theory, and attending classes is to restore theory to life. In the process of making the speech vivid and colloquial, the role of humor appears. Humor, of course, does not mean telling jokes that have nothing to do with the course content, but expressing some academic ideas in very popular and popular language, such as borrowing some popular lyrics, film and television dialogues, advertising slogans, two-part allegorical sayings and dialects. In other words, you can say the same idea in boring written language or in smart, lively and easy-to-remember spoken language. For example, you can say that Helen is the most beautiful girl in the Greek peninsula, or that Helen is the "island flower of the Greek peninsula"; You can say that Achilles cried at the seaside, or that Achilles "cried alone until dawn". His experience has taught us that "it is not a crime for a man to cry". You can say that Odysseus was able to return to his hometown because he always wanted to return to his hometown, or you can say, "If you know where to go, the whole world will make way for you"; You can type tatyana's love letter to onegin in the courseware and read it again, or you can sum it up with Chen Chusheng's lyrics: "Has anyone told you that I love you very much?" . Some people think that humor is innate. It's not entirely because of it. Humor is not so much a natural ability as an acquired attitude. For example, Yi Zhongtian, a popular teaching master, is famous for his "relaxed humor". But according to his own disclosure, many humorous words he uses in class are usually designed by racking his brains. Although some scholars or "high-level" listeners disapprove of Yi Zhongtian's humor and label it as "grandstanding", we can't expect him to do more and better if every university teacher loves teaching as much as he does, prepares lessons attentively and reaches his language level. Of course, if you are born with a lack of humor cells and are not interested in humor the day after tomorrow, you can still be as passionate as Yu Dan, although not everyone is used to and appreciates Yu Dan's teaching methods. 3. Passion Passion is perhaps the easiest thing to understand but unspeakable. Passion is the expression of self-confidence, which comes from the teacher's efforts and mastery of the teaching content. Teachers who are immersed in lesson plans will not have passion, and teachers who are full of written language will hardly have passion. Passion requires a certain level of Putonghua, but they are not necessarily related. Some teachers' putonghua level is not high, but it doesn't affect his passion at all. Passion needs to pay attention to the rhythm of teaching, for example, when analyzing the connotation of Greek mythology, we can use a brisk rhythm; When reading Pushkin's To Kane, you can use intoxicated eyes; Lev tolstoy can be explained in a deep tone. Passion is an input. Simply put, teachers must impress themselves before they can impress students. However, passion is not sensational. If it is, it is also a natural sensation, a natural affection. And sensational, is artificial passion, unprepared, sudden passion. It's like singing rock music A talented rock singer will naturally push a song to a climax with his music and singing skills, and the audience will unconsciously reach a state of intoxication and excitement. Inferior singers don't want to impress the audience with their songs and music, but they get up inexplicably as soon as they take the stage and jump there, asking the audience to swing with him. This is not the release of passion by rock singers, but the insanity of a group of lunatics. Fourthly, most teachers in China are introverted and shy. Although the teaching language of some male teachers is quite imposing and extroverted, their body language is still shy and mechanical. The podium is actually a stage. Although the teacher is not an actor, it will be useful to teach himself a little acting. Especially in literature class, not only the language should be open, but also the body should be open. Chinese teachers don't have to sit on students' desks or roll up their trousers whenever they talk about emotional places, just like western teachers, but they should learn from the confidence and boldness of some western teachers and don't let the podium and microphone tie their limbs. When reciting Pushkin's Ode to Freedom, you can think of yourself as a professional host. When performing Hamlet's monologue, you can become a star drama actor; You might as well play a hypocrite when explaining Dard's hypocrisy. When the teacher fully releases his passion with his limbs, the classroom atmosphere is also mobilized. Therefore, the interaction between teachers and students, teaching and learning from each other, is not just a superficial teacher asking questions, students stand up and come back. Teachers' eyes and actions can bring students into a kind of * * *, and let them participate in the classroom teaching process from the heart. Of course, in addition to the teacher's performance, students can also be provided with a performance space appropriately. For example, last semester, students can adapt, direct and perform fragments of Hamlet; Next semester, students can adapt, direct and perform Waiting for Godot. If you teach more than two classes at the same time, you can also let them perform PK and let the students be the public judges. 5. Teachers in the new technology era basically bid farewell to blackboards and slides, and ushered in the multimedia era. As far as the history of western literature is concerned, multimedia is not omnipotent, and it is absolutely impossible without multimedia. The author attended a course of "Advertising", which perfectly used the skills of pictures, images, charts, colors and sounds. Deeply admired, the author decided to follow his successful practice and explore how to make the teaching of "History of Western Literature" bid farewell to the plane era and enter the three-dimensional stage. Therefore, in the teaching process of next semester, the author will insert movie clips for a while and play TV feature films for a while. However, I was disappointed to learn that the students' course scores this semester were only 87 points, which was 8.5 points lower than the last semester before the "curriculum reform". In fact, the author made the mistake of being obsessed with technology and ignoring art. After all, the history of western literature is different from that of advertising, because the case of advertising is mainly based on images. Without multimedia, this course will be lifeless. The case of the History of Western Literature is a literary work with words as the carrier. After all, it is not "the history of western movies" or "the history of western art". Therefore, too many non-literary factors are mixed in the limited class hours, which will inevitably greatly squeeze the space that originally belonged to literature. At the same time, inserting too many fancy things not only interrupts the rhythm of the classroom, but also abandons the charm of language analysis, which is harmful to literature teaching. With this lesson, the author began to think about the compatibility between multimedia technology and language analysis, and thought that multimedia technology should be used where it is most needed. For example, the origin of ancient Roman culture can be shown in the movie Troy: After the city of Troy was breached, Paris, the prince of Troy, caught a young man who was about to retreat. His name was Aeneas, and Paris gave him a sword and asked him to create a new Troy with it. This new Troy is the predecessor of Rome. Then I began to talk about the origin and development of Rome and the relationship between Roman culture and Trojan culture. 6. With reference to academic research, originality is necessary, and originality is also very difficult. For this reason, many scholars choose an academic plot to innovate and work hard for decades, hoping to become experts in their own research fields. However, when scholars are also university teachers, problems arise. University teachers need to do popularization work, which requires him to have a broader understanding of the courses he teaches. In other words, teaching requires him to be a saint. However, the academic circles have formed a hidden rule: experts are more popular than saints. When holding academic conferences, colleagues always habitually ask, "What do you do?" If you can't answer, you will feel like a dwarf. If an expert wants to gain a foothold in the academic circle, he can only dig deep into his own plot, but he doesn't necessarily know more than ordinary graduate students without his own plot. This is also the reason why it is difficult for many well-known scholars to do well in undergraduate courses. The author is mainly engaged in the study of john updike, a contemporary American writer, but the course he teaches is "The Great History of Western Literature", which means that the author's research has little to do with teaching. The author is also engaged in the research of Russian writer Pushkin. In the history of western literature, Pushkin is the last writer who needs to be promoted, so the author condensed his research results into two classes, which not only achieved the purpose of popularization, but also reflected certain academic innovation. In this sense, academic research can improve the quality of classroom teaching and is a supplement to classroom teaching. However, it is impossible for a teacher to conduct in-depth research on each teaching object like an expert and put forward his own academic views. Moreover, as a teacher, due to the limited energy and time, if some problems are not considered for a long time, even if some of my own views are put forward, these "own" views are not necessarily the best and worth popularizing. Therefore, university teachers should not only cultivate their own academic plots diligently, but also set aside enough time to extensively dabble in other people's research results, and find the best point of view through comparison and identification, so as to introduce it to students in their own way in class. For example, before teaching Dante the Divine Comedy, the author read many related works and found that Mr. Xu Baogeng's explanation was the most unique and wonderful. Mr. Xu Baogeng believes that the secret of human happiness is hidden under the surface story of Dante's Visit to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise Dream: the road to heaven = Virgil+Bert Nietzsche, that is, the road to happiness = human wisdom+love. [1] On this basis, the author can also make some explanations: the secret of happiness is simple, that is, to be a knowledgeable person and a loving person. More popularly speaking, it is to do one thing well and love some people. Seven, when teaching the history of western literature, we can integrate some thinking of comparative literature. For example, a major feature of ancient Greek mythology is the humanity of God, which is mentioned in many textbooks, but it is abrupt and abstract. The so-called characteristics are revealed through comparison. In order to make this generalization more convincing, the author draws lessons from China mythology: in China mythology, God is dedicated to the public, while in Greek mythology, God is dedicated to the private; In China mythology, God is the protector of mankind, while in Greek mythology, God is the master of mankind. In China's mythology, God is serious and pays attention to inner moral cultivation. In Greek mythology, God is romantic and pays attention to external secular enjoyment. In China's mythology, God hides a single divinity without defects under the flawed appearance; In Greek mythology, God hides a single human nature with defects under his flawless appearance. Similarly, China literature teaching can consciously take western literature as the frame of reference. Using comparative thinking can not only help students review and integrate all kinds of knowledge they have learned, but also make a good reserve of consciousness and cases for students to learn the history of comparative literature. Of course, the use of comparative thinking should be natural and moderate, otherwise, the history of western literature will become the history of comparative literature. Eight, the story of Mr. Gao Yuanbao recently published an article called "the history of literature without" literary stories "-how to tell the history of modern literature in China" [2]. It is said that the History of China Literature written by China people pursues "big and complete", pays too much attention to the discovery and generalization of literary laws, cares too much about the tedious introduction of literary background knowledge, and has no literariness and story. The author also noticed the same problem in the history of western literature written by China people, and called this writing mode catch-22. [3] In fact, it doesn't matter whether there are stories written by experts in the history of western literature. It is important that the history of western literature told by the teacher himself in class should have stories. The main function of literature history textbooks is to provide clues for classic writers and works. A teacher with a little level and pursuit will naturally not teach according to the content of the textbook, because students have a textbook and they can read it by themselves. One of the tasks that teachers need to do is to restore the conceptual history of literature to rich and vivid stories. The essence of literature is story, and the content of story is the content of literature, that is, literature is human studies; The way of telling stories is the form of literature, that is, literature is aesthetics. The classic writers in the history of western literature are all masters of storytelling. Shakespeare is Shakespeare because he told Hamlet. Tolstoy is Tolstoy because he talked about war and peace. Therefore, the rational analysis of foreign literature should be based on vivid story telling. This is also the unique charm of literature class which is different from history class, philosophy class and ethics class. In this regard, we have to get out of a misunderstanding: the story is superficial, and only the theory is profound. So, what is Shakespeare's theory? What is Pushkin's theory? What is Dostoevsky's theory? Vivid and interesting things can also contain profound truth, while boring things are not necessarily profound philosophies. Nine. The teaching of the history of western literature can follow a general logic: from story to theory; From theory to idea. This requires writers and works to come first, and literary thoughts and laws to come last. For example, when it comes to Renaissance literature, we can take the Introduction to Renaissance Literature as the last section, starting with Dante, Cervantes, Petrarch, Boccaccio, rabelais and Shakespeare. If we start with "An Introduction to Renaissance Literature", it is easy to find that the bird of works carries a theoretical cage, which violates the cognitive habit from perceptual to rational, from case to theory. Telling a writer's works can be divided into "the writer's story" and "the story told by the writer". When telling The Writer's Story, it is best not to list the writer's life events in chronological order, but to grasp the key words closely related to his creation for analysis. For example, the key words of Dante's life are "politics" and "love"; The key words of Cervantes' life are: "stubbornness"-"broken arm" and "escape from prison", renting in a room with a brothel upstairs and a restaurant downstairs; Pushkin's key words in life are "love" and "death"; The key words of Goethe's life are "greatness" and "vulgarity"; Dostoevsky's key words in life are "resurrection after death" and so on. When telling a "story told by a writer", it is best to retell the story in a language full of modern life, and then analyze it from three levels: literal meaning, contemporary meaning and symbolic meaning. Ten, the soul of a great writer, his own story has a soul, and the story he tells must also have a soul, and the western literature constructed by "the writer's story" and "the story told by the writer" must also have a soul. Therefore, the introduction to the writer should present the writer's soul; The interpretation of the works should explore the soul in the story; The overall analysis of foreign literature should explore the soul of foreign culture. For example, Pushkin's key words in life are "love" and "death". His "love" shows that he is loyal to love, but not to the specific object of love, which is a kind of * * * nature of western poets. On the surface, they are infatuated with love, but in fact they are pursuing beauty and passion. At the same time, it also shows that western literature respects the tradition of "people preach by text" rather than "text preach by people" Pushkin's "death" shows that although Pushkin is weak in appearance, the Russian spirit is flowing in his bones: brave, strong and never yielding, which is also his attitude when he opposes the czar's autocratic system. The soul of Pushkin's works is love, beauty and freedom. Of course, specific works should also be analyzed in detail. Taking yevgeny onegin as an example, on the surface, it tells a love tragedy: it is not difficult to love someone, nor to be loved by someone, but it is difficult to let two things happen at the same time; Judging from the significance of the story, it tells the story of an unnecessary person in the period of Russian cultural transformation; From the symbolic meaning of the story, redundant people are not only figures and cultural phenomena in a specific era, but also represent a universal state of life. The soul of Homer's epic is wisdom, strength and honor. The soul of knight literature is "the knight never leaves the old woman"; The soul of Biography of the Giant is to "let life break through all taboos and reach the realm of freedom"; Don Quixote's soul is "blind enthusiasm needs to be avoided, but the banner of faith cannot be easily put down"; The soul of divine comedy is "how to get happiness"; The soul of red and black is "what is happiness"; Faust's soul is "no ultimate ideal, only eternal pursuit", "desire is the source of life, and desire is also the root of death". The soul of writers and works constitute the soul of western literature: humanistic tradition.