Zhu Ziqing believes that the composition of middle school students at that time had several shortcomings: First, quick success and instant benefit. "Always want to create, and eager to publish. Don't feel the actual need, reading and writing are just people, just doing things according to the rules; Natural perfunctory and games are inevitable. " The second is unclear thinking. "I have been correcting students' compositions for many years, and I think their biggest problem is unclear thinking. Unclear thinking means unclear thinking or disorganized. " "This problem is not obvious in narrative articles (including descriptive articles) and lyric articles, but it is easy to see in explanatory articles and argumentative articles. "The third one has nothing to say." Give some small topics and let them find their own words in their daily life. But most of them still talk as usual and seem to have nothing to say; When you write "lamp", you said that lamp includes plant oil lamp, kerosene lamp and electric lamp. When you write "road", you say that roads include dirt roads, gravel roads and asphalt roads, and the rest are meaningless. "The fourth one doesn't matter." Often it's just a touch of the topic, and then it opens, and an irrelevant story or an irrelevant dialogue comes. Take "Night" as an example. I think of a story at night. There is no shadow of night in this story. For example, in Little Star, it is said that I went to a field in the morning, met a farmer, complained about some hardships, and came back with a sigh, without mentioning the appearance of the morning. "Fifth, the choice of words and sentences is unreasonable." As for the use of words, few are skilled; Almost every sentence has some unsatisfactory sentences, plus a lot of other words. Most of the words are arranged in sequence (although nothing is said), I'm afraid there is only one tenth at most. "
Zhu Ziqing believes that there are so many problems in students' composition, largely because teachers have not really fulfilled their responsibilities, paid no attention to composition training and improper teaching methods. He thinks it is difficult to teach students to observe and think for themselves. But some teachers "invite an oriental writer and a western writer to the lecture hall, pick some here and gather some there." It can be said that students are willing to listen. But the east wind has passed, what is left after listening? " Then neither teachers nor students pay attention to the training of composition. "Some Chinese teachers, as well as many students, are lazy about writing exercises and often write only once or twice a semester. Sometimes the teacher doesn't even change these two compositions, so he quietly confiscates them. " He also criticized: "The common fault of young students nowadays is that they are big and informal. They only talk about interest and hate training; Seeing that the Chinese teacher is just a trafficker of new thoughts, he wants to get all the new thoughts. In order to meet this demand, Chinese teachers also make plans everywhere and concentrate on dealing with it; I am so happy that I don't read my notes or change my composition. I just go to the lecture hall every day. Everyone seems to think that it doesn't matter if they can't do it, that it doesn't matter if they write other words, that it doesn't matter if they are arrogant, and that it doesn't matter if they call a deer a horse. In fact, they are not entirely willing to do so, just afraid of trouble and are not interested. Interested in everything, interest is not always there; I have to be sloppy. "
Zhu Ziqing was very sad about the decline in the writing level of middle school students at that time. In the 1940s, he published three articles on the topic of "Chinese level of middle school students", hoping that the society could pay attention to this serious problem. At the same time, as a master of prose and a Chinese teacher, he put forward many incisive opinions in an attempt to improve composition teaching in middle schools.
First of all, teachers should guide students to take "creation" as the composition goal and set up imaginary readers, so as to cultivate students' interest in writing and make students feel that writing is so-called rather than just a mechanical exercise. Zhu Ziqing said: "Of course, writing is a basic training, a life skill training-and a life training. However, this broad goal alone cannot attract students' attention. " "Training students to write doesn't give them a close goal. They often don't know who they are writing for. Of course they know that writing is for teachers; In fact, only teachers watch, or add some classmates and their fathers and brothers. But if every writing is really for these people, then writing is really no fun. Probably many students really think so, so they can't help but perfunctory school rules and careless responsibilities. "Therefore, we should regard composition as a kind of' creation', take writing practice as an application, and regard imaginary readers as objects. Writing is suitable for these imaginary readers. There are many imaginary readers, "in addition to fathers, brothers, teachers, close classmates or friends, there are all students, all middle school students, ordinary young people, locals, various associations, governments, government leaders, general society, and others that have not been counted." He also stressed that writing practice can be done without teachers, but not without imaginary readers. For example: "In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, families taught their children to write ancient prose, and the imaginary readers were ordinary social and examination officials. Middle school students practice writing, and the imaginary readers are usually all students and the society at large. For example, Sunday Hiking should probably be read by all students. However, most teachers and students ignore the idea of imaginary readers. When students write, they don't realize that imaginary readers often don't distinguish between various genres, but only write so-so. When it is actually applied, it will naturally be inappropriate. "
Secondly, teachers' writing training for middle school students should be aimed at the words in newspapers and general magazines. Zhu Ziqing suggested that students should pay attention to learning words in newspapers and magazines, including news, comments and advertisements. "This has three advantages. First, cutting and using, with development; Second, there are almost all kinds of applied words; Third, it is easy to realize various readers in various languages. " People may think that "the words in newspapers and general magazines are often exaggerated and used as targets, and I am afraid that middle school students' writing will go from bad to worse." He thinks that "this concern is too much", because "newspapers and magazines also have cautious and friendly words", and students can "read as many newspapers and magazines as possible". In these newspapers and magazines, because of their reading experience, they will also distinguish which words are rude and exaggerated and which are not. There are a lot of discussions and arguments in "moreover" newspapers, which can also correct the shortcomings of Chinese teaching at this stage. Zhu Ziqing also added: "Newspapers and magazines are just extracurricular reading materials. I only said that it should be based on the words of newspapers and magazines, not as teaching materials; Of course, some textbooks can be selected from newspapers and general magazines, but mainly not from these magazines. "
Third, teachers should cultivate students' interest and ability to appreciate literature, so that students can do a good job only if they know how to appreciate literature. How to appreciate literature? Zhu Ziqing said: "Abuse of literary tone everywhere is not appreciation of literature. This interest is incorrect. Since these students can't tell literature from non-literature, their appreciation ability is unreliable. Appreciation begins with discrimination, and discrimination of meaning, sentence pattern, organization and genre is basic. The appreciation of swallowing dates is just an unintentional hobby and has no benefit. " He believes that appreciating the achievements of literature can affect his writing and bring some literary interest, thus achieving what Liang Qichao said: "Writing often brings emotion."
Fourthly, Zhu Ziqing also pointed out several problems that should be paid attention to in composition training. For example, we should pay attention to the single exercise of composition, that is, to decompose the difficult points of words and sentences in composition training, one by one. "Do more analysis exercises. The practice of analysis is based on sentences, sections or whole articles. In this way, we can focus on this and that part. The section is clear, and the whole article is easy to understand. " Another example is practicing writing from a small scale. "Practice writing on issues closely related to real life, such as school meals. You caught the point and wrote it clearly. This is a very organized article. " For another example, by guiding students to write a detailed outline to clarify the thinking of writing. "When writing a composition, write a detailed outline first. This is not from the tone, but from the meaning and the arrangement of ideas. This is an appeal to logic. You'd better ask the teacher to look at the outline. The idea is arranged in an orderly way and it should be easier to pass the text. " In addition, Zhu Ziqing also emphasized that "writing and reading are related, and reading contributes to the improvement of thinking and writing skills". When answering the editor's question about the writing of Back, he said: "Only by reading more books can you know how to polish the text. Both reading aloud and silent reading have to be practiced. "
Although Zhu Ziqing put forward the above viewpoint as early as more than half a century ago, many problems he pointed out in middle school students' compositions at that time still exist in today's middle school students' compositions to varying degrees, and some unreasonable practices such as "not even changing these two compositions at that time, but quietly confiscating them" he criticized are familiar to some of our teachers today. Moreover, many of his viewpoints are in line with the characteristics of composition teaching in modern middle schools and some regular principles in writing training. Therefore, Mr. Zhu Ziqing's theory on middle school composition teaching still has important reference value for us to improve the current middle school composition teaching, which is worth our serious study and research.