It's not the tool's fault to test Chinese.
In the classroom, teachers "often talk about the text and dig deep into its humanistic connotation, some of which are like ideological education classes;" Or deeply analyze some scientific principles in the text, explore some natural mysteries related to the text, and do some experiments involved. It seems that the class is about science, biology and physics, and let students discuss their speeches blindly without induction, prompting language problems and pointing out the methods and processes of Chinese learning, and so on. "In such a Chinese class, the goal of language ability cannot be implemented, and the mission of cultivating students' reading, writing, listening and speaking ability entrusted by history and society is quietly dissolving. In order to solve this problem effectively, we need to re-recognize and correctly understand the instrumentality of Chinese.
The instrumental value of Chinese lies in the fundamental purpose of Chinese as a discipline-to cultivate students' ability to use their mother tongue, so that students can master language skillfully as a tool for thinking and exchanging ideas, understand others accurately and express themselves. The text presented in the Chinese subject, that is, the text in the textbook, is not different from other subjects in form, but its foothold is fundamentally different. Specifically, Chinese takes verbal form as its own teaching content, while mathematics, physics and chemistry take verbal content as their own teaching content. For example, the article "Chinese Stone Arch Bridge" is selected into the teaching material, not to let students know about the stone arch bridge, but to let students master the relevant knowledge of reading and writing expositions, and learn to write expositions through appropriate practice.
The purpose of learning Chinese for China students is to master the speech forms used for understanding and expression, which is a tool of Chinese. Foreign countries have basically the same understanding of the value of mother tongue courses. For example, Britain believes that mother tongue teaching "should cultivate students' ability to communicate effectively in spoken and written language"; "To enable students to acquire basic language skills in order to realize the autonomy of expression and understanding" is the purpose of French mother tongue teaching reform in the 1990s. The purpose of mother tongue teaching is also defined as "developing and perfecting students' various forms of speech activities (reading, writing, listening and speaking)" in the National Education Standard for General Basic Education of Russian Federation Law.
The instrumentality of Chinese is questioned, which stems from the reflection of China society on the depressing situation of Chinese education at that time in the 1990s. After a long discussion, many people finally put all their accounts on the Chinese tool. There are two things to blame: first, the instrumentality of Chinese leads to too much language knowledge teaching, and second, the instrumentality leads to technical training.
In fact, the real reason for the first question lies in two misunderstandings at that time. The first misunderstanding is that the relationship between knowledge and ability is misunderstood, and it is believed that as long as enough knowledge is instilled, ability will naturally form. The second misunderstanding is that language knowledge equals Chinese knowledge. Since knowledge indoctrination means the formation of ability, and Chinese knowledge is language knowledge, it is not difficult to understand that language training has been replaced by large-scale language knowledge indoctrination. In fact, Chinese knowledge is different from language knowledge. Only part of the language knowledge that helps to form Chinese ability is Chinese knowledge. Even Chinese knowledge cannot be equated with Chinese ability. The transformation from knowledge to ability needs an indispensable link, that is, language practice. If this link is not given due attention, then knowledge is still knowledge and cannot be transformed into ability. Therefore, it is the wrong view of knowledge that leads to inappropriate Chinese knowledge teaching. The instrumentality of Chinese itself does not emphasize the indoctrination of Chinese knowledge, on the contrary, it points out the direction for the practical dimension of Chinese learning. From this point of view, the reason why knowledge infusion replaces ability training does not lie in the instrumentality of Chinese itself, but in the failure to grasp the essence of Chinese instrumentality.
Let's look at the second charge. What is technical training? Among the many voices accusing Chinese of being instrumental, no one has made a clear explanation, but we can generally think that the so-called "technical training" refers to teaching Chinese as a pure technology in a closed and isolated way out of social life. For example, ignoring the fuzziness and ambiguity of Chinese, demanding the uniqueness of the answer, engaging in sea tactics, and so on. In fact, the root of this teaching method is that it violates the law of the formation of Chinese ability and blindly caters to the evaluation system of exam-oriented education. When the function of education has actually degenerated into the reality of step-by-step screening, elimination and selection, a difference of one point may mean a world of difference in the future and destiny of learners. Then, this score is of course endowed with extraordinary significance. When Chinese people stare at scores without exception, the pursuit of objectivity and credibility of scores has become a matter of great concern to the whole society. In this way, the evaluation of all disciplines will inevitably be pushed to the peak of "quantification" indiscriminately, and the result of this is that needless to say, the energetic disciplines have also been forcibly quantified. However, the subject of Chinese will be changed beyond recognition because of the examination of subjects and the examination-oriented Chinese education. Therefore, accurately speaking, this situation is the result of the distortion of Chinese education and teaching by the current evaluation system, and it is not just Chinese that suffers from it.
When we learn Chinese as an important communication tool, it means solid training in actual situations. For example, learning to drive, it is difficult for learners to keep learning the traffic rules and driving methods in books and stay away from cars and roads. In fact, emphasizing the instrumentality of Chinese will not only lead to the so-called "technical training" divorced from life, but also emphasize the practicality of Chinese learning. From the perspective of Chinese teaching, the instrumental answer is the question of what to teach Chinese, which belongs to the content of teaching content; Technical training answers the question of how to teach, which belongs to the content of teaching methods. It is groundless to say that China people's pursuit of instrumentality leads to technical training. In fact, in order to avoid technical training, we should accurately understand the laws revealed by the instrumentality of Chinese and practice them.
It can be seen that there is no causal relationship between the pursuit of Chinese instrumentality and the existing problems in Chinese teaching, but it is of great significance to re-emphasize and implement Chinese instrumentality in practice to solve the problems.
What we have to do now is to make it clear that the focus of Chinese learning lies in the form of speech rather than the content of speech. The important reason why Chinese teaching has been inefficient is that it has been given too many missions, thus diluting or even blurring the main purpose of Chinese teaching. Secondly, Chinese does not exclude the study of verbal content, that is, humanistic content. Without the absorption and accumulation of extensive cultural knowledge, the formation of Chinese ability will become empty talk. However, the learning of speech content should be limited to the framework of "form-content-form" as far as possible, because the learning of this kind of content serves the learning of language form, so it is moderate, not infinite. In Chinese class, we should confidently train students' Chinese ability. (The author is a lecturer at the College of Literature, Jinzhong University)
The emphasis on human nature is far from enough.
In recent years, many educational newspapers and periodicals have published a large number of articles criticizing the tendency of paying too much attention to humanism in curriculum reform, especially in Chinese curriculum reform. For a time, the voice of rectification was everywhere. It seems that the Chinese curriculum reform emphasizes the "bias" of humanities. The author believes that this kind of rectification should be viewed from the objective reality of teaching.
As far as Chinese curriculum reform is concerned, the deviation is generally concentrated in three aspects: first, it overemphasizes humanism and downplays instrumentality; Second, one-sided emphasis on personalized experience makes multiple interpretations emerge one after another; The third is to conduct formal cooperative exploration in the classroom.
It must be admitted that the above bias does exist in the Chinese curriculum reform, and it is also reflected in different degrees in the open classes and demonstration classes I have heard. However, this bias rarely appears in the usual classroom teaching, and there is no climate. However, the deviation reviser basically takes the open class and demonstration class as the basis for drawing conclusions, which is obviously contrary to the facts.
Qian Menglong, a famous special-grade teacher, put forward the rectification movement earlier in the Chinese language field. He pointed out in the article "Enlightening the Soul for Chinese Teaching" that "there are a series of symptoms of' losing your mind' in Chinese teaching at present, and it is necessary to recruit a soul for it". The symptoms mentioned by Mr. Qian are mainly that some teachers make the class gaudy and lively in order to publicize human nature and increase the cultural content of the teaching content, but after a class, the students are very unfamiliar with the text. But at the same time, Mr. Qian also has to admit that the above bias is particularly prominent in the exhibition class, and it is still a common phenomenon in daily Chinese teaching to "follow the old track of' taking the exam' and go its own way". Therefore, Mr. Qian is actually recruiting "souls" for the Chinese presentation class.
Another China education expert, Mr. Li Hailin, made a more comprehensive analysis of the deviation in China's class. He summarized these tendencies as: pan-language culture, non-centralized expansion, ineffective discussion, teachers' inaction, de-knowledge, multimedia and so on. Needless to say, some Chinese classes, as Teacher Li said, have become "any other classes, but they are not Chinese classes". For example, when talking about the tendency of "no-center expansion", Teacher Li gave the following example: "I once listened to an open class of" Baoyu was beaten ",and the teacher was ingenious and invited parents to attend the class together. First, let a student tell the story of Baoyu's beating, and then I entered the "expansion": let the students tell whether they have been beaten, then let the parents tell why they beat their children, and finally let everyone discuss "beating". Obviously, it is not normal to invite parents to class together. Teacher Li's exposition did not really go deep into the daily Chinese classroom teaching, but only noticed the appearances in the open class and the demonstration class.
We must affirm that the starting point of the rectification is good, so as to prevent the Chinese curriculum reform from overcorrecting. However, because they only see some superficial phenomena, they will inevitably make the mistake of generalizing, which will lead to the wrong estimation and biased understanding of the current situation of curriculum reform. If you really go deep into the reality and walk into the Chinese classroom of daily teaching, you will see a completely different scene.
The author believes that there is a huge contrast between the lessons in the eyes of experts and the daily teaching of teachers. Most open classes are performance-oriented. Because of the deviation of ideas, instructors often deliberately create new forms and routines to enhance the appreciation of the classroom and produce distinctive effects. Daily lessons, on the other hand, must be tested by evaluation methods such as exams and have "practical" value. It is hard to imagine that an ordinary Chinese teacher dares to "make a wedding dress for others" under the restriction of the evaluation system, and regards daily Chinese classes as political classes, history classes, geography classes or other classes. Even teachers in open classes will not apply that performance-oriented method to ordinary classroom teaching.
It is not easy to realize such a major change as the new curriculum reform, and there are bound to be many obstacles. Because the evaluation standards and methods of Chinese courses have not changed substantially, no one dares to ignore exams and their corresponding teaching contents in daily teaching. Outdated teaching concepts and helplessness in the face of examination still hinder the process of Chinese curriculum reform. The practice of overemphasizing humanistic spirit is only manifested in open classes and demonstration classes, and the tendency to ignore humanistic spirit in daily teaching is still very serious.