First, the artistic expression of blank space and its basis
"Blank space" is an important creative method and concept of Chinese painting. It means that when white is black, it can receive the artistic effect of setting each other off, and it has both form and spirit, creating an artistic realm without painting everywhere. Blank is a creative expression based on artistic imagination. It pays attention to the combination of reality and reality, the creation of nothingness, the change and echo between blank and entity, and blank and blank. This echo is expressed by trends, actions and expressions, thus forming a harmonious relationship as a whole, breaking through the two-dimensional space of paper and obtaining a highly layered three-dimensional effect. People even use blanks to replace entities such as running water and heaven and earth, such as creating a unique expression of "empty water method". The charm of flowing water is interesting, without any romance of pen and ink, and the use of blank space can be called the pinnacle. For example, Ma Yuan, a famous landscape painter in the Southern Song Dynasty, painted a picture of a boat floating on the water, a fisherman sitting on the boat fishing, and the surroundings were almost blank except for a few microwaves. Nevertheless, it provides the audience with a far-reaching artistic conception. Qi Baishi painted shrimps, often a few lively and exquisite shrimps. Mr. Qi's paintings are empty and intentional everywhere, ethereal and secluded, and the virtual and the real set each other off, showing the width of heaven and earth between square inches. "It is the land without ink, and the smoke is boundless." There is a blank in the picture, just like the high sky or empty background in the photo, which is much more comfortable to stay in front of you.
Not only Chinese painting, but also some other arts pay attention to the use of blank space technology. Calligraphy art uses lines to express meaning, but calligraphy works pay attention to the density of composition and layout, and the dead pen in the works is actually blank. China's seal art emphasizes that "sparseness is feasible, while secrecy is airtight", and its sparseness is also the embodiment of the art of blank space. Ouyang Zhongshi, a famous calligrapher, felt that the arrangement of the four words in his name could not achieve the beautiful effect, so he asked his teacher, Mr. Qi Baishi, who suggested that he compress the word "Zhong Shi" to the size of one word and put it in the upper left corner of the seal, leaving the lower left corner vacant. Ouyang Zhongshi used this seal in his later calligraphy works, which shows his appreciation of this seal. This is a successful example of blank space in seal cutting. Music takes rhythm and melody as its expression language, but it also pays attention to the artistry of blank space. "Silence is better than sound" (Bai Juyi's Pipa) is a blank in music, and this blank of pipa girl gives Jiangzhou Sima endless imagination space; "Echoes reverberate around the beam for three days" (Liezi Tang Wen), which is also the artistic effect of blank music.
Speaking of blank space, we have to trace it back to Laozi. There is a saying in the Tao Te Ching: "A loud voice makes an elephant invisible" (Chapter 41). This kind of "voice of hope" and "invisibility" is a philosophical basis of "leaving blank", which has a great influence on later generations, and gradually formed the artistic spirit of China's art that emphasizes leaving blank and uncertainty. On the other hand, after Buddhism was introduced, it had a close relationship with Taoism in China and evolved into Buddhism-Zen in China. Void is also one of its basic meanings. In Zen, understanding Buddhism pays attention to wisdom, which refers to the material basis involved, but pays more attention to "enlightenment". Wisdom is the spiritual guarantee in the process of meditation. Buddhist enlightenment can be divided into gradual enlightenment and epiphany. The disciples of Hongren, the fifth ancestor, advocated gradual enlightenment, while Huineng advocated epiphany (the Six Ancestors Tanjing). Zen master Huineng, the sixth ancestor of Zen Buddhism, won the Buddha in one fell swoop and was praised by Zen master Hongren. Young Huineng is in charge of the rice industry in the temple, winning with "Bodhi has no trees, the mirror is not a stage, and there is no such thing as dust". It is a model of "epiphany". The "gradual realization" and "epiphany" here are actually gaps in thinking.
Literati of all ages obtained artistic methods from the dialectical relationship between "emptiness" and "reality", so they found the beauty of blank space. Such as "implication", "implication beyond rhyme" and "implication beyond taste" are all clear annotations to the artistic law of blank space.
Mr. Lv Shuxiang once said: "Chinese teaching is half science and half art" (quoted from Yu Yi and Chinese Teaching, page 84), among which artistry can be described as the highest realm of Chinese teaching. The teacher himself once said that "Chinese teaching should pursue the intangible artistic realm of elephants", and Mr. Hong also said that "teachers should use their own teaching art in limited space and time to develop students' infinite thinking ability and introduce students into the kingdom of positive thinking" (ibid.). Furthermore, the essence of Chinese learning is the process of students' thinking activities. Therefore, no matter from the artistic pursuit of teaching or the thinking process of learning, Chinese teaching should pay attention to the design of "blank space".
Second, the Chinese classroom calls for art to leave blank.
(A) "artistic blank" is the feature of the work itself.
Hemingway, a great writer, said that literary creation pays attention to the iceberg principle. The writer only shows the tip of the iceberg in the article, and readers need to go through one-eighth of the water to see seven-eighths of the water. This sentence vividly reveals the law of blank space in literary works. In many literary works, the author does not comment on the people, events and scenes in the works, but leaves a large blank for readers to have different views. For example, in The Necklace, the author did not comment on the behavior of the protagonist Mathilde, but after it was included in the textbook, some people kept discussing its theme. There are still different views on the theme of Li Shangyin's Jinse. These are of course some extreme examples. Some works with clear connotations and themes are left blank and can be seen everywhere in middle school textbooks. Kong Yiji, who lives in such an era and such a society, is bound to die, but Mr. Lu Xun did not find it directly, but used the phrase "about really dead" to make people guess; The "underground forest" in Zhang Kangkang's Reflections on the Underground Forest can be seen at a glance, whether people living in that era or readers familiar with the "Cultural Revolution" era (except for middle school students today), but the symbolic meaning of the "underground forest" has never been pointed out in the article. There are countless blank verses: "When a pilgrim's hat carries the sunset, he goes further and further down the green hill", and smart people leave us with a back full of wisdom; "Sailing alone, the sky is blue in Wan Li, and only the Yangtze River flows in the sky", "Then he disappears at the corner of the pass, leaving only hoofprint behind him", everything seems to fade out of our sight (including the poet), but we clearly feel that emotion overflows the picture.
In short, blank space is an inherent feature of literary works, so reading teaching must follow natural courses like experts and act according to the inherent laws of the text, so it is necessary to call for "artistic blank space" in classroom teaching.
(B) artistic blank is the need of pursuing artistic realm in Chinese teaching.
Teaching is like painting, painting in students' minds and thinking spaces, and that teacher is a painter. A clever Chinese teacher should pursue everyone's realm instead of becoming a craftsman. He shouldn't just draw words, sentences, paragraphs and other landscapes on the canvas of the classroom and think that everything is all right. Instead, he should consider the position and opportunity of each kind of "scene", whether to teach or not, and express blank space in the spatial collocation of "scene" and blank space in the thinking process.
1. Leave blank when reading.
"Chinese Curriculum Standard" pays attention to students' independent reading experience and advocates "four-step reading method", which requires accurate reading, fluent reading, reading mood and reading environment. If you want to read deeply step by step, guide students to explore independently, grasp the text from the simple to the deep, attach importance to students' individual participation and emphasize students' emotional experience, you must leave a space for students to read aloud, a sky for students to imagine, and realize the spiritual communication between students and the author, so that the voice you read will not be empty and artificial. Students can give full play to their imagination in emotional reading, see the world described by the author with "inner eyes" and listen to the author's voice with "inner ears" ... Only when reading on the basis of real feelings can they flow like clouds. Or like a torrent, surging; Or you are in Taoyuan, where birds are singing and flowers are fragrant. ...
In teaching, whether it is demonstration reading, individual reading or group reading, teachers should ask why they should deal with intonation, speed, coherence and pause in reading. In this way, the form of sound symbols is integrated with the content of the text and the students' understanding and thinking. The process of thinking and answering questions is to leave blank in reading.
Leave the question blank.
The problem of blank space can be discussed from the perspective of teachers and students.
Questioning is one of the common means for teachers to organize classroom teaching, and it is also one of the most common teaching forms in the classroom. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the art of blank space in the classroom, there are still many problems worth discussing in our Chinese classroom, which are as follows: a question asked has no thinking value, such as "Who is the author of this article" or what is the meaning of "widowed wife" in classical Chinese (which can be found in notes); Second, the question itself is extremely valuable, but it is too straightforward. Although it can train students' thinking ability and expression ability, it lacks artistry, such as "what role does a sentence (paragraph) play in the article" and so on. Qian Menglong, a famous special-grade teacher, designed his question about the word "widowed" in this way: "Excuse me, classmates, the neighbor's son is only seven or eight years old (at that time, the students already understood the meaning of the word" beggar "), so he jumped out to help, and he was willing. Isn't his father worried? " Such questions are carefully designed, seemingly sudden, but can arouse students' thinking. As soon as this question came out, all the teachers smiled at each other and were impressed by Qian Lao's art of asking questions. In short, the art of blank space is Mr. Qian Menglong's "Appropriate Song" (The Art of Reading Guidance in Qian Menglong, p. 87). A little more "Wen Qu" can make the thinker turn a corner, which not only improves the quality of thinking, but also increases the space for thinking, and embodies the art of leaving questions blank.
From the students' point of view, the art of blank space is manifested in two levels. The first level is to encourage students to question, which is conducive to cultivating students' independent thinking ability. According to psychological research, when students change the contradictions encountered in learning from internal language to external language, the problems that were not very clear will become clear and the thinking process will become clear. This process of "enlightenment" is the process of thinking blank. To deal with the relationship between perception and questioning, first of all, it is necessary to set aside relatively large time in teaching for students to fully question and ask difficult questions. Questioning and questioning are not only arranged when students first read the text, but also should encourage students to generate new questions in the process of in-depth study and asking questions at any time. The second level is the questions raised by students. Teachers should judge and screen, take corresponding measures according to the questions, and can't answer directly, otherwise they may indulge students and form thinking inertia. The correct way is to let the questioner think deeply. If there are quality and difficulty problems, students can be organized to discuss them, and even some questions can be left for students to think after class, so as to cultivate their spirit and ability of inquiry. When the author was teaching Ode to Snow, after students perceived the content of the article, some students suggested: which sentence is better: "Sprinkle salt in the air" and "Don't catkin because of the wind". Although this is a thinking problem after the article, it is of great thinking value. At that time, the author decided not to speak from the perspective of literary appreciation, but to guide students to re-read the text and find out the reasons for the pros and cons from the content of the article. After some research, the students found the word "one after another" to explain the heavy snow at that time, which should be like catkins instead of salt grains, and found out the supplement "eldest brother has no wife, and left general Wang Ningzhi's wife", which is better than the previous sentence. The process of guiding students to reread the text is the process of reading the blank space and also the process of inspiring thinking. Confucius said, "Don't be angry, don't be angry, don't be angry, don't be angry." Inspiration is not to give an answer directly, but to stimulate their interest and inspire their thinking.
3. Leave the product blank
Reading is to ponder from different angles, or to grasp word by word, or to make a macro appreciation in the selection of articles. The process of reading is a chewing process, just like the rumination of cattle. When reading, teachers should point out methods and express goals, but they can't explain the whole process, and should guide students to chew repeatedly. Mr. Yu Yingchao, a famous special-grade teacher, used the phrase "There are two in the text ..." to ask students to answer questions and guide them to read more than a dozen comparative materials, which can be described as a model of blank reading.
In classroom teaching, no matter what kind of teaching form is left blank, its essence is to leave a process of "enlightenment" for students. Whether it is "epiphany" or "gradual enlightenment", we should leave a gap between space and time. Obviously, high-density and fast-paced training is contrary to this. Many teachers value students' "epiphany" in classroom teaching, which is naturally good, but more often, they need to wait for students' "gradual enlightenment". Mr. Xu Zhiwei once said, "Some questions can make students spend days, months or even their whole lives thinking, instead of asking them to answer in time, let alone within a limited time". From the teaching point of view, what the predecessors called "meditation and enlightenment" is essentially a process of thinking blank, and many Zen machines are not quickly understood by everyone.
(3) The principles and measures of pursuing blank space art in Chinese classroom teaching.
Teachers are the organizers of the classroom, so the key to pursuing effective classroom gaps lies in teachers. Changing teachers' teaching concept, eradicating teachers' verbal hegemony, eliminating teachers' sense of ostentation and extravagance, reading for students and giving students the right to "realize" are the principles to realize effective classroom blank space.
In classroom teaching, the pursuit of artistic blank must vary with the teaching text, leaving space for students to feel the content and emotion of the text; Because of the different thinking States of students, it is left to students to improve the process of rigorous thinking; Because of the different teaching links and forms, it is necessary and effective to adopt the methods of arousing doubts, padding doubts and solving doubts, and adopting the means of connection, supplement and expansion.
If this is the case, it is not difficult to form Chinese literacy if students are inspired by infection without the teaching of words.