Originally, language education and literature education were not contradictory. However, the concept of Chinese education pursued by some current textbooks has caused the division between them, forcing Chinese teaching to choose between them.
Zhou Yimin, a special-grade teacher, once pointed out in "Talking about Seven Textbooks of Chinese in Primary Schools": "There is a so-called mainstream view in the field of Chinese in primary schools, which holds that Chinese in primary schools is a Chinese class and focuses on the study of language and characters." It can be seen that the current educational circles in China show a tendency of attaching importance to language education and neglecting literature education.
Literature education is the main idea of Chinese education in primary schools.
Although in proportion, literary works occupy the main position in the current primary school Chinese textbooks, the literary texture, practical ideas and operation methods of the selected works are far from literary education.
Literature education should be the main idea of Chinese education in primary schools. I once worked as a textbook project of the Ministry of Education, Chinese education in primary schools. In the research of this project, I put forward the concept and operation method of "literature education" as primary school Chinese education, which was fully affirmed by two evaluation experts of this project-Li Jilin, vice president of China Education Association, and Cui Luan, chairman of the primary school Chinese teaching Committee of China Education Association. In the Review Opinion, they believe that the concept of "literature education" is innovative and scientific: "The majority of primary school Chinese teachers generally lack the concept and operation of literature education in reading teaching. The proposal of' literature education' will cause primary school Chinese teachers to think about reading teaching and form a new understanding. " "Starting with' literature education', we can effectively implement quality education in primary school reading teaching, because' literature education' conforms to the laws of children's physical and mental development and children's language learning, and conforms to the laws of primary school reading teaching."
The so-called literature education refers to a series of processes and behaviors that transform the language education value and humanistic spirit of children's songs, children's poems, fairy tales, fables, stories, novels, essays and ancient poems into students' language ability and humanistic ability in Chinese education and teaching. In Chinese education in primary schools, literature education and language education are two sides of the same paper, which are interdependent and inseparable.
Although the current primary school Chinese textbooks occupy a major position in proportion, there is a certain distance between the literariness of selected texts and the concept and operation mode of organizing Chinese exercises. If literature education can't become the main concept of primary school Chinese education, the problematic primary school Chinese textbooks can't return to the solid foundation on which it should stand.
Give children a complete and rich context.
Words should be mastered through contextual learning. Because the author of the textbook ignored the importance of context, the text was abbreviated and compressed. However, for children, an informative story is easier to feel, understand and remember.
Literacy and word interpretation should be carried out in context and reading, not in isolation. The meaning of each word should be guessed according to its position in the text, that is, in a specific context, it is a way for children to learn words through reading. However, some of our textbooks and words are not taught in reading. For example, the article "Direct Writing" is a good historical story. However, how is the teaching of this article designed? Compare them, and then talk about your understanding of the following words in combination with the text: kind words, lies, outspoken, rumors and advice. I looked it up in the text. Apart from "outspoken", no other words were found in the text. In other words, "kind words, lies, rumors and advice" have nothing to do with this text. But the textbook writer asks students to "talk about your understanding of the following words in combination with the text". Other textbooks have designed the practice of "reading aloud and reciting", so that students can recite idioms in isolation, listing angels in white, Yu Xiebing Qing, being calm, unity is strength, unity is strength and so on. Some textbooks even make great efforts to teach students to memorize phrase structures in isolation, such as AABB (powerful), Ababou (rambling), ABB (dark) and ABCC (talented). This is really teaching useless dead knowledge and wasting children's time. When writing an article, do you need to consider whether I should use a word with the structure of AABB, ABB or ABCC before writing? If so, I believe all writers will not write. No matter how to understand the structure of phrases, even memorize all the words in the dictionary. If you don't understand these words in context, you still can't gain reading and writing ability.
Leaving the specific context, the specific form and the language system, teaching some dead words and useless "knowledge" in isolation is a Chinese education that some textbook writers understand and practice. Perhaps he thinks that returning to the context is to teach literature, and extracting words alone to teach is to teach language, that is, to teach language and words. But this kind of practice, unscientific, will not work. Vygotsky said in Thinking and Language: "Practical experience also shows that it is impossible and ineffective to teach concepts directly. A teacher who tries to do this has accomplished nothing but empty talk and parroting by children. " Taking lev tolstoy's Teaching Chinese to Farmers' Children as an example, he agrees with Tolstoy's view that "what children need is an opportunity to acquire new concepts and words from the context of ordinary language". Following Tolstoy and Vygotsky's thought of learning language by reading in context, we will inevitably return to the position of literature education.
Because of the isolated and mechanical view on the existence of language, many textbooks are written to make "language" as simple, plain and clear as possible, which is embodied in China literature textbooks, that is, dwarf literature. Chinese textbooks tend to be simplified, compressed and conceptualized in literature, and the unique complex evolution process, tortuous development, delicate psychological description, complex personality and so on are deleted, which is considered easy to grasp. Then there is very simple and plain language. They think that children will easily master this way. The so-called relaxation is our textbook writers' own feelings, but it is even more difficult for children. Because for children in the literary period, the rich, delicate and specific literary information in a story is easier to feel, experience, understand and remember. You can do an experiment if you don't believe me. You can abbreviate Lauber's Waiting Letter into a 200-word Taiwan Province textbook Rain Frog Waiting Letter, and show it to the second-grade children with 1200 words to see which story they are more interested in, which story they remember more clearly, and which story they can get more language information from.
Literature education is a language education that really promotes the language development of primary school students.
Literature education is the Chinese education that can best implement Chinese learning. Just as it is easier for children to learn to sing children's songs than to learn daily communication language, it is easier for primary school students to learn literary reading and literary expression. Because for them, literature is not an esoteric language, but the language around them and the language of life.
Literature education includes three levels: literature language education, the cultivation of imagination and the cultivation of sound human nature. These three levels are an inseparable whole. Literature education is language education. Moreover, literature education is a kind of Chinese education that really promotes the language development of primary school students and can best implement Chinese learning.
I understand literature as a work that relies on the language of thinking in images and expresses the thoughts and emotions experienced by human beings in their existence with the help of imagination. Bruno, an American psychologist, believes that we use logic and abstract rules to understand the physical world and stories to understand the human world. These two cultures that embody human wisdom should not only complement each other, but also the wisdom of stories (thinking in images) is the bud or seed of the whole wisdom.
There is a view that literature is extensive and profound, and Chinese education in primary schools is mass education. It is enough to let students learn dialogue, communication and simple writing in some daily practical languages. Teaching literature is only teaching reading, and it is not necessary to teach creative expression of literature. Teaching literature creatively expresses elite education. The reason for this view is that theorists don't understand that primary school students are in the literary period and how good they are at literary expression. For primary school students, literature (especially children's literature) is an advanced language, but it is not a profound language, but a language around them and a language of life.
1994 Go to Nandaihe for a meeting and stay at the seaside guest house. When the house was not soundproofed, I heard someone talking loudly in the next room until very late. A child's mother complained that she was so ill-bred, and the two sides quarreled. At this time, the children in the second grade of primary school said, "Our puppy knows that everyone is sleeping at night and doesn't make any noise or bark." There a listen to, immediately don't make any noise. The child made a pun, but he wasn't swearing. He just uses situational association to express his unique feelings and express his views in literary language. In children's lives, there are countless such examples. Therefore, teaching literature reading and expression is easier for primary school students to learn, just as it is easier for children to learn to sing children's songs than to learn daily communication language. In primary school, literature education is not an elite education, but a veritable mass education, which is a universal education for all children to cope with their literary ability. Only when the muse's ability degenerates to the adult stage can literary education have the color of elite education.
Literary language education has multiple functions. Although literature is emotional as a whole, it also has something rational. Novels, stories and even poems all contain rationality. Moreover, some literary works have both the pleasure of reading and the training of thinking. For example, "Little Tadpole Looking for Mom", is there no cognitive training for things? It is also about the relationship between the part and the whole. A whole is not the sum of its parts. The picture books "Where is Our Mother" and "Seven Blind Mice" are also typical works with cognitive functions, which are of great help to cultivate children's cognition from part to whole. Including children's songs, such as the question and answer song "What is sharp to the sky", the structure and scenes between sentences are repeated. Seeing repeated structures and scenes, children's thinking will begin to infer and use previous information to guess the answer. Literature is enlightening to thinking and can train children's abilities of association, induction, judgment and reasoning, which are closely related to language ability.
In short, there are two kinds of language systems in Chinese textbooks for primary schools, namely, the language system with image thinking as the main form embodied in literature textbooks and the language system with logical thinking as the main form represented by expository textbooks (this language system is connected with argumentative essays or argumentative essays after junior high school). I advocate that literature education is the main concept of Chinese education in primary schools, and I don't mean to exclude expository teaching. In primary school, it is urgent to cultivate children's logical thinking ability through Chinese education. The so-called literature education in this paper is language education. For the compilation and teaching of literature textbooks. This meaning is also for readers' reference.
(The author is
Chinese Marine University
Professor, School of Literature and Journalism)
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