Dream Allegory in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Its Application to Englsih Teaching

• Main Authors: Hsiang-chun Yu, 游香君
• Other Authors: Hsiao-chen Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/84982452795110108156

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 93 === The thesis attempts to interpret Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in terms of dream allegory and to apply it to English teaching. Thus the former part of the thesis is applying dream allegory characteristics to interpret Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and discusses how the characteristics are presented in this novel, and in the latter part of the thesis the researcher focuses on the teaching of the concept of dream allegory in A Christmas Carol. Initially some methods and activities for teaching novels will be covered and then an experiment will be conducted to teach A Christmas Carol. The whole thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, including thesis statement, literature review and organization of the thesis. Chapter Two focuses on discussing the characteristics of dream allegory and it also includes the motivation as well as methodology of this research. Characteristics of dream allegory are found to contain: a dream framework, dual meaning and allegorical names, crisis, journey and epiphany. These characteristics are discussed respectively and examples, like works of The Pilgrim’s Progress and “Young Goodman Brown” are presented to account for the characteristics. In Chapter Three, A Christmas Carol is analyzed through dream allegory’s point of view. The characteristics of dream allegory are applied to provide profound insight to the understanding of the novel. Chapter Four is analysis of the teaching material. It offers guidelines in teaching novels and it also discusses the appropriateness of teaching A Christmas Carol. Chapter Five is about the application of A Christmas Carol to the EFL Vocational High School classroom in Taiwan. It presents the two research questions: 1. What are vocational high school students’ perceptions about reading English novels before and after the teaching of A Christmas Carol? 2. What is the effect of the concept of dream allegory in A Christmas Carol on EFL vocational high school students in Taiwan? Chapter Four also provides description of the subjects, instruments, text, lesson plan, teaching procedures, and data collecting procedures. Chapter Six presents and discusses the results of the teaching application. It is found that though before the teaching experiment most students think that reading English novels is helpful to learn English, but they think reading English novels is not easy. However, after the teaching experiment some have conquered their fear of reading English novels. The teaching of A Christmas Carol is approved by over sixty percents of students agreeing that the content of the book is suitable for them to read. The students were found to understand the dream allegory presented in the novel. Chapter Seven summarizes major findings of the study, discusses limitations of the present study and also provides suggestions for further study.