I. Introduction
General education originated from free education in
ancient Greece. It refers to non-professional higher ed-
ucation, which aims to cultivate students’ comprehen-
sive quality and make students develop in an all-round
way in morality, emotion and reason. English literature
is a compulsory course for English Majors in Colleges
and universities in China. Its teaching method is main-
ly traditional classroom teaching. Due to the difficulty
of the course and the large vocabulary involved, many
students are frustrated in learning it, so it is hard to
achieve the expected effect. Recently although some
colleges and universities have moved the traditional
teaching content to the Internet, it is seriously lack of
interaction and flexibility, which seldom produces good
learning results. Professor A. S. Packard, the founder
of general education in the university, believes that
general education is to integrate classical, literary and
scientific education and prepares for professional learn-
ing (p, 1). Therefore, general education is not only an
idea of university education, but also a “whole person”
cultivating mode.
As is known, Britain is a country with a long history
and rich cultural heritage. In the long history of 1500
years, its brilliant literary achievements have attract-
ed worldwide attention. There are many talents and
masters in the field of literature in various historical pe-
riods, and their literary works have contributed to the
treasure house of world literature. According to past
experience, however, most people in China will flinch
at the mention of English literature, especially the orig-
inal English literary books. It is a pity that they can not
reach such a “peak” because of their limited English
level and low appreciation ability. At present, English
literature is only taught in English majors in colleges
and universities. Through research and investigation,
it is found that the teaching status of English litera-
ture is not optimistic. On the one hand, teachers spend
a lot of time and energy consulting materials for lesson
preparation. Although multimedia and other teaching
means are also added, the response of students in the
classroom is mediocre and the teaching effect is not
as expected. On the other hand, the learning effect is
difficult to achieve due to the course difficulties, large
vocabularies and dull classroom atmosphere. In addi-
tion, from a pragmatic point of view, some people feel
that learning English literature is of little significance.
For non- English Majors and many others, it is even
harder to understand and master English literature,
history and culture in English. Therefore, using mod-
ern network technology and MOOC platform to carry
out general education on English literature for students
can enable them to master the precious achievements
of the development of human civilization and encour-
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