Keywords: Chinese literacy; Confused; Countermeasures
China Library ClassificationNo.: G623.23 Document ID: A DocumentNo.:1009-010x (2007) 07/08-0031-02.
"Chinese Curriculum Standard" clearly puts forward that Chinese teaching should improve students' Chinese literacy, and listening, speaking, reading and writing ability is an important embodiment of Chinese literacy. From a large number of investigations and studies, we know that there are the following puzzles in improving the Chinese literacy of primary and secondary school students.
First, the misunderstanding of writing teaching
Nowadays, from primary school to university, there are not many students who can write standard and beautiful words, and many students even write incorrectly. Writing correctly, writing correctly and writing beautifully have the same requirements for students, and most of them can only be seen in calligraphy training classes held in society. It was originally the teaching task of the school and the responsibility of the teacher, but now it is openly "handed over" to the society.
The reasons for this situation are: first, the evaluation mechanism is one-sided, and many places evaluate students, and the writing quality is not one of them; Evaluating teachers is not a condition for teaching students how to write well. Secondly, in the eyes of many Chinese teachers, teaching students to write is a teaching task, and writing well does not seem to be a teaching task. In understanding, because writing is not linked to test scores, many parents and teachers think that writing is enough, and it doesn't matter whether the handwriting is standardized or not. What kind of font do you want, as long as you have computer printing, has nothing to do with the quality of students' writing. Thirdly, in terms of teacher training, the "three tricks" are marginalized, especially in undergraduate normal universities, and the teaching content has faded out. Normal students don't consider the quality of writing when they graduate, and a large number of private teachers don't consider the basic skills of writing, which leads to a large number of Chinese teachers in primary and secondary schools failing the writing exam and unable to demonstrate to students. It is not surprising that students write poorly.
In addition, the writing class stipulated in the current textbook can not complete the tasks written by students, and Chinese class is the main class for writing.
Second, extracurricular reading has long been neglected.
In the middle and late 1980s, most rural schools did not have libraries, only public schools at or above the county level did. Later, there were libraries in rural primary and secondary schools that basically reached the standard, but they were rarely open to students. We visited many schools, no matter in the county or in the countryside, the books on the shelves of the school library were covered with dust, so it was difficult to find a school that often borrowed books from students and opened a library.
There are many reasons why students cannot borrow books. First of all, whether there is a library and whether there are a certain number of books must be checked, but whether it is open to students is not included in the teaching work of the school. The quality of school work has nothing to do with borrowing books, and the relevant departments don't ask. Secondly, school teaching management does not look at whether to organize reading extracurricular books or not, and does not use them as the basis for evaluating teachers; Thirdly, whether students read extracurricular books is not the basis for evaluating students' learning situation. Teachers and parents only stare at the exam results.
Third, the teacher didn't pay enough attention to endorsement.
Endorsement is one of the best forms of language accumulation. The ancients attached great importance to reciting in reading, which lasted for thousands of years in China. But now in our Chinese teaching, recitation, as the content of Chinese teaching, occupies a very small position in our primary and secondary school teachers' lesson preparation and teaching. The main reasons are as follows: (1) The textbook arrangement requires less overall recitation; Teaching management and evaluation teachers mainly look at test scores, and the amount of recitation has little effect on test scores, even less in the short term. It is still the mainstream of Chinese teaching (especially in rural primary and secondary schools). Insufficient understanding of the long-term positive effect of recitation on students. The famous American speaker, Mr. Jane machine, once said, "Develop our memory well. The average person only uses a few percent. The more articles you recite, the better your memory. " And reciting a lot is a great opportunity to exercise and cultivate memory.
Fourth, reading training, only a few people have been trained.
As an important aspect of Chinese learning, reading aloud will play a positive role in promoting students' appreciation, understanding, perception and language learning. Chinese teaching is inseparable from reading aloud, and learning without reading aloud is not Chinese learning.
In our survey, the proportion of students who study well in the class is only 20% at most, less than 10%. Most students have poor reading ability. Most students have poor ability to appreciate, feel, understand and use language, which is an important reason why students don't like learning Chinese. The ancients focused on reading and reciting Chinese. They shook their heads as they read the poem. Not only do they not feel tired, but they find it quite relaxing, pleasant and interesting to sit quietly and stagger after listening to the class. This method is very suitable for children's psychological and age characteristics.
Compared with our Chinese teaching, most teachers still give lectures, and too much analysis fills the classroom. Although some new tricks such as "discussion" have been grafted, the students' speeches are superficial and childish, and the language is pale and colorless. After listening to the introduction of a junior high school student, their Chinese teacher taught Mr. Fujino. After the teacher asks the students to read the text silently, listen to the teacher's analysis of the writing characteristics and central idea of the article. After only one class, the class literature is finished, and the students only read the text once. I asked the student what was good about Mr. Lu Xun's article, and he said, "It's not good at all. It's a mess." Hearing this really surprised us.
Because teachers do not attach importance to reading aloud in teaching, there are few opportunities to read aloud to students. Sometimes, in pursuit of speed, they only pay attention to students who study well. Therefore, in Chinese teaching, reading training has only trained a few top students, and it cannot be geared to all.
Fifth, oral training needs to be strengthened.
With the reform, opening up and progress of society, people's communication is getting closer and closer, and the level of spoken English is becoming more and more important. However, our Chinese teaching ignores oral training. It is mainly manifested in changing the oral training class at will. Some teachers think that oral class is of little significance to improving students' Chinese performance. It is a waste of time to arrange an oral class, so it is better to do more practice. Although some teachers took oral lessons according to the textbooks, they only exercised some students. This organization is loose, inefficient and a mere formality. More generally, the task of improving students' oral English depends entirely on biweekly oral English classes, ignoring that the main position of improving students' oral English is in daily Chinese classes. In the Chinese class of reading less and speaking more, some teachers show their eloquence too much, taking away the opportunity that students should have to speak and "grab food" with students. All these have caused most students to be ashamed to express themselves in public, with low voices, lack of words, lack of self-confidence, insincerity, empty words and even incoherence; Or bowed their heads and said nothing, blushing. In this way, how can these students integrate into society in the future?
Six, long-term neglect of writing habits.
Many university teachers think that freshmen's Chinese scores in the college entrance examination are getting higher year by year, but their writing ability is getting lower year by year, which is a kind of "irony" to the current education. Listen to a junior high school student's parents say that the child has only written one composition in junior high school for three years. High school teachers also said that the composition level of freshmen is still the level of primary school graduation. In primary school, to what extent can eight assignments per semester improve children's writing level?
From primary school to middle school, the key to cultivating students' writing ability is to practice calligraphy from a small place and cultivate students' good habit of practicing calligraphy every day. Without good habits, there will be no higher ability. But what is the current situation of composition teaching in primary and secondary schools? As far as we know, many teachers rarely arrange students to practice writing in daily teaching, and never let students keep diaries. Occasionally write, don't read. Good writing can't be encouraged, and poor writing can't be encouraged. Therefore, most students find it difficult to write every composition, ask their parents for help, or copy documents. Writing has become the most feared homework for students.
It can be seen that many factors restrict the improvement of students' Chinese literacy. To improve students' Chinese literacy, we must break through the following two aspects.
Countermeasure 1: It is imperative to reform the evaluation of Chinese teaching.
There are many factors that restrict the improvement of students' Chinese literacy, such as organizing extracurricular reading, writing standard words, reading aloud, oral expression and reciting. These are often neglected in teaching management and current evaluation mechanism. The singleness and simplification of evaluation urge teachers to pursue scores unilaterally and ignore the overall improvement of students' Chinese literacy.
In order to improve students' Chinese literacy, since September 1998, we have carried out comprehensive Chinese reform experiments in primary schools, reformed the curriculum, and adjusted and added reading guidance classes, oral English classes, listening classes and extracurricular reading guidance classes every week; On the basis of familiarity with reading and emotional reading, Chinese class recites all the texts of grade one and grade two, most of the short stories and wonderful paragraphs of novels of grade three and grade four, grade five and grade six. Reflect the teaching guiding ideology of reading more (familiar with the text, reading with emotion, reading extra-curricular books), speaking more (feeling, telling stories), listening more, recording more, and writing more (writing, practicing pens, keeping diaries); Simplify Chinese homework. There are only two homework tasks every day: practicing calligraphy and keeping a diary. Each text only copies words, writes words with words (phrases) and imitates sentences. In terms of evaluation, there is no mid-term exam, and the final exam is divided into seven items in two weeks, including standard word imitation, reading, oral composition, listening, reading, writing and basic knowledge, all of which are scored. Implement process management for teachers and formulate evaluation rules. Experiments show that students have a strong interest in learning Chinese, and the amount of reading, reciting, writing, writing and oral training has greatly increased. The ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing is much higher than that of non-experimental students, which has won extensive support from parents and fundamentally improved students' Chinese literacy. When the students of 12 and 12 finish reciting all the poems in the textbook, they don't feel tired, but feel very happy and their memory speed is getting faster and faster. On the one hand, we are infinitely gratified, but we can't help asking: Why can't we let the students recite? Why not learn from the ancients?
Therefore, evaluation reform is imperative. Whether it is college entrance examination, senior high school entrance examination or classroom examination, as long as the content orientation of the examination questions is not to guide students to read more, recite more, communicate more and practice more, teachers and parents will inevitably push students to the bridge of "scores", and most of them will not reflect on their teaching behavior when they see students falling into the water. In this way, the overall improvement of students' Chinese literacy is still far away, and saving "mother tongue" education can only stay in words.
Countermeasure 2: Learning interest and habit cultivation are the most important.
Interest is the source of motivation to do anything well. Cultivating students' interest in learning Chinese is the spiritual source of learning Chinese well and improving Chinese literacy. To improve the interest in learning Chinese, we should guide students to enter the text, feel the language, understand the language and integrate into the situation, such as being there, hearing its voice and meeting people; Then go out of the text, return to life, feel life, and then love life, and experience the beauty and fun of language in association and imagination. Encourage students to learn Chinese in life, use Chinese in middle school, learn useful Chinese, appreciate and use the value of learning, and enjoy the harvest. Numerous examples have proved that combining the text content with students' familiar life and carrying out more Chinese practice activities will make students enjoy learning, while students will be bored with learning when they return empty-handed.
Interest is cultivated, but also cultivate good study habits. In primary schools, it is very important to impart knowledge, and it is even more important to cultivate good study habits. Unfortunately, most teachers and parents don't realize this. Good Chinese learning habits include: observation and thinking habits (keeping a diary), writing habits, writing habits, reading habits after class, reciting habits, emotional reading habits, oral expression habits, listening habits, reading habits and so on.
No habits, no ability. Once these good habits are formed, students' listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities will be improved quickly. Chinese teachers' teaching ideal-cultivating students' good Chinese literacy will be just around the corner!
Editor in charge: Wang Kaigui