I also studied self-study, majoring in English, but I have already graduated. English and American literature was indeed a very troublesome subject when I was in school, but even if the mountain is high, some people will climb it. In fact, learning British and American literature mainly involves memorizing the relevant introductions about authors and articles in front of the selected text. The other is to read the main selections carefully, especially those by some famous writers, such as Shakespeare. Each of his selections is very important, so you must read them carefully. There is also the need to match the work and the author. When we took the exam, we had questions about matching authors and works. Finally, let me talk about a small method that I have summarized myself. Usually, everyone is required to make a list of the literature of a certain period. Those who do not read the books are asked to write it down, and those from Britain and the United States are asked to write it together. Because the American part started relatively late, we can do the British part first. After you make a list of writers, write about their works for each writer. Then think about the main content of the work. And extract some main things based on the cultural background of this period. I used this method at that time, especially one month before the exam, this method was more effective. British and American literature is a very good subject. Although it is difficult to learn, it can benefit you throughout your life. Hope you pass successfully!
There are basically no shortcuts in this course. You must read it all. Remember, you must read the original text. The translation is only for reference. You don’t need to read the life in too much detail, but you must remember to be familiar with the works, just like the writers and works you memorized in junior high school history. The British part accounts for 60 points and the American part accounts for 40 points. You can read books according to this ratio. Then there is the syllabus at the end of the textbook. Following that can help you sort things out. Then there are the real questions from past years, which must be real questions. The questions are usually found from the question bank. Sometimes many questions can be asked continuously for several years. English and American literature must be studied steadily. Unless you are a student who has already done some research on literature, it may seem a little smoother. Each writer's style must be readily understood, and the final big question tests these. As well as all the excerpts in the textbook, you must know whose works they are and what is related to these works. It’s usually okay to choose something that looks familiar, but the premise is that it really looks familiar to you. I think the most important thing is to read the textbook. You must not read the translation as the main thing, because the questions are all in English. Finally, I hope you can pass smoothly.
Introduction to the self-study “British and American Literature Selective Reading” course
Course nature and learning purposes
The British and American Literature Selective Course is the undergraduate section of the National Higher Education Self-study Examination for English Language and Literature The required course is a professional theoretical course set up to cultivate and test the basic theoretical knowledge of British and American literature and the ability of self-study candidates to understand and appreciate the original works of British and American literature. This course is designed to enable self-learners in English to have a general understanding of the formation and development of British and American literature; and by reading representative British and American literary works, understand the content of the works, learn to analyze the artistic characteristics of the works, and strive to master the correct Criteria and methods for evaluating literary works. Since this course focuses on the works of writers, candidates are required to read the original works carefully. Through reading, we strive to improve their language proficiency, enhance their understanding of the original works of British and American literature, especially the understanding of social life and the thoughts and feelings of the characters reflected in the works, and improve their ability to read literary works and their appreciation level.
According to the exam syllabus for this course, the knowledge and theories involved in the content that requires "memorization" are directly related to the assessment points. Candidates should be familiar with its concepts and related knowledge, understand its principles, and Can be identified in the language environment. Any content that is required to be "understood" must be mastered with relevant knowledge and theories. Any content that requires "application" must be converted into abilities based on the mastery of relevant knowledge and theories, that is, the ability to use relevant knowledge and theories to analyze and solve relevant problems in British and American literature, and guide the reading of works. For content that requires "general memorization", the knowledge and theories involved are generally not directly used as the content of the propositions in the assessment. However, because these contents have a direct or indirect impact on other related knowledge and theories as well as the assessment of work reading ability, Therefore, candidates are required to understand these contents during the self-study process
Summary of famous self-study teachers: How to prepare for British and American literature selection April 9, 2009 19:21 New Oriental
New Oriental Practical English Huang Peichen, Self-Study Department of the College
The course English and American Literature is relatively difficult to study. It requires a lot of knowledge to be memorized and understood. The key to learning this course well is to pay attention to the following issues.
First, pay attention to details. Literature has newly promulgated the examination syllabus and clearly stipulates the assessment objectives. All writers within the assessment target range must read carefully until they can tell the following contents before continuing to review backwards: 1) What are his main works? 2) What is the theme of his writing? 3) What is his writing style? 4) Is he a representative writer of this era? If so, is there any possibility of answering big questions? If these questions can be clearly stated, then the day of passing the exam is not far away.
Secondly, review must be structured. Some students did not summarize the details well enough, while others memorized the details quite well, but their language expression skills were not good enough. For the former type of students, the first forty-point multiple-choice questions are not ideal, and there are excerpted questions at the end, which is even more difficult.
The latter type of students remember the details, but there are many spelling and grammatical errors. You can tell who the author is, but the writing is wrong. It is a pity to lose points like this. For such students, I think it is very important to set a weekly reading schedule. For example, from April 1st to April 3rd, when you are going to review the English Renaissance part, you can read the details in the book every morning and have a good understanding of the content. A general understanding. In the afternoon, I dedicated myself to memorizing the large-scale answer questions. I also took into account the details. I clearly remembered the content of the large-scale answer questions and controlled the progress. The efficiency was naturally improved.
Also, be sure to read the excerpts at the end of the author’s comments. Some candidates only read introductions about writers and literary genres without reading excerpts from textbooks. This is very dangerous. The test paper selects quotations from textbooks and requires candidates to answer the author's name, the title of the work and their understanding of the quotation. In fact, it's not that these candidates don't want to read the following quotations, but they haven't learned how to read them. To understand the following selections, the key is to understand the writing characteristics of literature textbooks. You have to first figure out the author's creative themes and ideas (this part is usually written in the writer's review section) and then follow the creative themes to the selected articles to find sentences that are consistent with these creative ideas (the selected articles are posted at the back, often with the main part of the creation) It is disjointed) This way you can read less without missing the content. For example, the theme of Whitman's poem, Song of Myself, is "praising individualism, freedom, and equality." It uses the first-person method to connect the poet's thoughts with the public's thoughts, and sings the praises of a free America. The first verse of the song of myself in the excerpt at the back of the book reflects this theme: I celebrate myself and I sing myself. (This sentence talks about freedom and individualism), Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. (The poet in this sentence hopes to connect his own thoughts with the thoughts of the public). Obviously, every American has turned praising himself into a motto. A country where everyone sings about freedom must also be a country that sings about freedom. country. In short, you must read the excerpts in sequence, find the theme first, and then read the excerpts. Finally, you cannot memorize big questions by rote. You have to think of ways to speed up your memory efficiency. For example, if you want to memorize Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, how do you memorize a long section? The simplest way is to memorize the general meaning of the Chinese first, then grab the keywords and recall what the English content is. You can memorize it like this: "The west wind is Shelley's image. The west wind is the constructive and destructive potential. The west wind is the ubiquitous power. It uses the natural gods to pray for hope and resurrection." deity for hope and rebirth)” captures the keywords, doesn’t the content become clear? Another thing is to find some similarities between writers, and between Britain and the United States, which is also very beneficial for memorization. For example, when talking about Thomas Hardy's naturalism in the text, there is a saying that "Character is destiny, environment is destiny." There is also a similar content in the American section when discussing the naturalism of Thomas Hardy. At this time, you must first memorize Thomas Hardy's naturalism. For some content, only by memorizing the previous content can the following content be passed quickly and improve learning efficiency. Similar situations also appear: some keywords are similar between Dickens's creative themes and Bernard Shaw's creative themes (both talk about condemning social hypocrisy, injustice and corruption), the characteristics of modern British literary creation and the characteristics of American literary creation (They all mentioned from public to private, from chronological to psychic, from objective to subjective). Many students who come to New Oriental to take classes are actually not very proficient in English at first, and they also have a headache with literature. But after I found the memory method, I found literature very interesting. In the end, I not only got high marks in the exam, but also fell in love with literature. It's all about learning the method. In short, if you can't "intensively read" every sentence, you won't have enough time, and you may not remember it during the exam. It wastes time and delays efficiency, and the gain outweighs the loss.
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