名著阅读课Great Expectations
Chapter One ——Pip Meets a Stranger
Honorable judges and dear fellow teachers, good morning. I’m privileged to be here to share with you my teaching design. I’d like to present my ideas in the following five aspects. Analysis of the teaching material, analysis of the students, teaching objectives, teaching and learning methods, teaching procedures and teaching effects.
First, analysis of the teaching material. The reading material I’m going to interpret is the first chapter of Great Expectations, one of the representative works of Charles Dickens. In this chapter, the main character Pip, an orphan brought up by his sister and brother-in-law, met an odd stranger in the graveyard. Under the threat of the stranger, Pip was forced to steal some food and a file from his sister’s house. Unfortunately, it turned out that the stranger was very likely to be the wanted criminal at large. As is typical of Charles Dickens’ works, the language of this chapter is descriptive and concise while the development of the plot is quite logical and engaging. Good understanding of them will definitely arouse students’ interest in appreciating classic literature and improve their comprehensive abilities in English.
Second, analysis of the students. The learners for this lesson are in grade three, on the one hand they have a certain amount of vocabularies and some basic reading skills, thus having no difficulty in grasping the meaning or analyzing the characters. On the other hand, they are rarely exposed to classic foreign literature, thus having no idea how it may help them with their English studies or shape their cross-culture awareness and interaction.
Third, teaching objectives. Based on the above analysis and core competence requirement. The teaching objectives of this lesson are to enable the students to:
summarize the factual information about the encounter between Pip and the stranger by extracting the main idea and combing the structure of this chapter;
analyze the chapter from different aspects through reading activities based on self-study and group discussion;
get a deep understanding of the relationship between human and self by giving full play to their predictions regarding Pip’s possible choices;
gain a sharper insight into classic foreign literature and become more interested in English learning.
Four, teaching and learning methods. In order to achieve the above objectives, I adopt the activity-based method and try to build student-centered class to stimulate their autonomous and cooperative learning.
Fifth, teaching procedures. The activities I design can be roughly divided into four parts. Lead-in, pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. Not only do they involve different levels of learning activities, but they are also a process from input to output.
Step one, lead-in. At the very beginning of the class, I give a brief introduction to Charles Dickens as well as his representative works. Then, students watch a video clip of Great Expectations and identify the main characters. And thus we begin the journey of exploring this chapter.
Step two, first reading. Students read the title “Pip Meets A Stranger” and predict what might be talked about in this text. Next, I invite students to read the first part of the text and answer three questions:
Who was Pip
Where did Pip meet the stranger
What did the stranger look like
By answering these questions, students get the background information and basic facts.
Step three, second reading. After the feedback, students continue reading and find out what the strangers asked Pip to do and how Pip responded. Students are encouraged to locate the key information as quickly as possible. Next I ask each student to read the text carefully again and use a story map to note down all the key information. Then share and revise their story maps in groups. To make it doable for intermediate-level students, they are allowed to use a dictionary if coming across any new words. Hopefully, students can internalize the language and knowledge in the description. I also invite two groups to draw their story maps on the board and describe the plot to the whole class. After the retelling, students answer the following two questions based on the clues from the text.
Why was the stranger afraid of being found out by others
What do you think of Pip based on his family background and what he did
Students are supposed to explain their answers with evidence found from the text. In the process of describing and clarifying, students are more likely to internalize the language and knowledge in this chapter.
Step four, post-reading. Students work in groups to prepare a discussion as to the following questions.
What might happen to Pip if he were caught stealing food by his sister
Imagine you were Pip, would you choose to help the stranger Why or why not
By creating a certain scenario closely knitted to the development of the plot, student are open themselves to more innovative thinkings and feel free to give full play to their imagination.
Step five, post-reading. Read the text again. Choose one character that impresses you most and write an introduction.
Lastly, about the teaching effect. In fact, all the teaching objectives were basically achieved. Not only did the students take an active part in the activities, but they all performed surprisingly well. However, reading classic literature is relatively time-consuming and thus not always the best choice for classroom teaching. I hold the firm belief that if given more time and chances, they are sure to make rapid progress in English learning and thinking quality through reading classic foreign literature.
That’s all for my presentation, thank you.