| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語教育研究所 === 85 === The importance of Great Expectations lies on its attack on
the Victorian society--on the issues of the penal system, the
latent threat to the human world that lies beneath the age of an
industrial society and people''s craze formammonism. Dickens''s
art and dexterity of using the autobiographical mode and, in
particular, associating some major characters with social
symbols, truly make this novel achieve an unrivaled status. This
thesis examines the important social issues of the Victorian
Era, such as the reasons for industrialcapitalism and its
influences, the penal system, and the snobbery phenomenonwhich
results from people''s aggression for material wealth. Moreover,
in orderto correct the stereotyped idea of teaching or learning
literature as a tiringand boring experience, the author
conducted an experiment of applying GreatExpectations to
literature teaching in a senior high school EFL classroom.
Fromthe responses of the pre-instructional questionnaire and
post-instructional questionnaire (see Appendices IV & V), it was
found that well-prepared lesson plans, combining an eclectic
approach with teaching activities, are the indispensable
elements of success in literature teaching. This study is
divided into five parts. Chapter one introduces Charles Dickens''
s writing background,summarizes the general social background of
the Victorian England, and points out the practicality of
applying Great Expectations to senior high school English
teaching. Chapter two examines the major characters in the novel
whichassociate with social symbols. Chapter three discusses the
important issuesin Victorian society, issues such as capitalism,
penal system, and snobbery.Chapter four concentrates on the
pedagogical implication and the analyses of themajor findings in
the teaching experiment. Chapter five concludes the
aboveanalyses and discussions, and echoes the main ideas of the
study by pointingout the most successful achievement of Charles
Dickens as a passionate commentator.
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