Approach to Improving the Teaching Effect of General Education Course of Humanities in Research Universities: Taking South China University of Technology as an Example

General education of humanities has been implemented in China’s colleges and universities for nearly 30 years, but so far, there are not many studies on the teaching of general education courses of humanities, among which the study on improving the teaching effect of general education courses of humanities, especially the study based on empirical evidence, although is very necessary, is even rarer. In order to explore the approach to improve the teaching effect of general education courses in humanities, in the past 9 semesters at South China University of Technology, a research-oriented university in China, the author of this paper carried out teaching exploration in a total of 14 large classes, and 23 small classes taught by himself, with 3094 undergraduate students enrolled, in three general education courses of humanities, namely "Anglo-American Literature and Culture", "Selected Readings of English Poetry", and "Tasting Chinese Classics in English", by implementing four teaching modes in classroom teaching: topic+interactive, topic+non-interactive, non-topic+interactive, non-topic+ non-interactive. It is found that topic-centered interactive small class teaching achieves the best teaching effect. At the same time, surveys and investigations conducted by the author of this paper on the teaching of general education courses of humanities at South China University of Technology demonstrate that interactive small class teaching taught by teachers with professor titles achieves optimal teaching effect. It can be thus concluded that the topic-centered, interactive small class teaching taught by a professor is the best approach to improve the teaching effect of general education courses of humanities in a research university. It is expected that the findings of this study will serve as a reference for other research universities in China to improve the teaching effect of general education courses in humanities.