Teaching Methods of Former Language Teachers

China's Ancient Language Teaching Implications for Modern Language Teaching

(This article was read and published at the Fourth Sino-American Education Symposium held in Beijing in July 2000, and was published in the National Essays on Basic Education in September 2001, and was published in the National Essays on Basic Education. "(The Experimental Center for Education of the Central Institute for Educational Sciences, China Education Science Publishing House. (China Education Science Publishing House)

The author's name at the time of this article's publication: Shantou, Guangdong Province. (Li Tongyi, The Third Middle School of Chaoyang City)

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Chinese, as a mother tongue, is an important part of language teaching in China.

In recent years, top-down thinking has been particularly active in the circle of Chinese language (as a mother tongue) teaching, and many experts and teachers have taken a rather serious attitude towards the effectiveness of language teaching, and reflections have touched upon the guiding ideology of teaching, the setup of teaching materials, and teaching methodology, and a rather mature **** knowledge has been reached.

The problem can be traced back to 1978, Mr. Lu Shuxiang said: "Ten years of compulsory education time (more than 2,700 hours) is used to study, but the majority of people do not pass the test, is not it a strange thing? 2700 hours, close to the primary and secondary schools 30% of the total class time. However, tens of millions of young workers across the country are taking remedial classes every year. After entering the university, many people can not take notes, can not write laboratory reports, cases. As for hard penmanship, it is known to be even worse." These words of Mr. Lu Shuxiang became a trigger for reflection in the language teaching community, and are also considered to be the unofficial "summary" of language teaching in primary and secondary schools for more than 30 years after the founding of the country - mainly during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. "

These words became a trigger for reflection in the language teaching community.

When Wen Wei Po organized an influential discussion on how to improve language teaching on March 20, 1992, Mr. Chen Zhongliang once again raised that "striking problem", that is, "our students spend the most time on language learning, but their ability to use language and writing is not strong". The reasons for this are The reasons for this are: ① Language teaching used to emphasize the analysis of contents and chapters, which weakened the most basic language training. ①The language teaching used to emphasize the analysis of contents and chapters, which weakened the basic language training. The teaching of formalism is prevalent, do not talk about the effect.

Many teachers followed, some teachers pointed out that the current open class (observation, experience sharing, practice, fine-tuning ......) has been a complete formality, there are the following major shortcomings: ① emphasis on lecture light practice, listening instead of practicing. ② deliberately seeking profit, not much benefit. ③ emphasize listening to lectures, ignoring the evaluation of lectures.

Some teachers pointed out that: "the biggest drawback of today's primary and secondary language classes is that teachers talk too much"; "in the instrumental, practical efforts"; "language teaching to adapt to the needs of modern life. "; some teachers emphasize improving reading teaching and offering fast reading to meet the needs of the information world. Some teachers found the college entrance examination essay questions unreasonable; "the question papers are getting longer and longer, with more and more text, and the content coverage is expanding more and more." The 1991 college entrance exam questions, for example, were eight pages full of 6,000 words, including Chinese character pronunciation, shape recognition, punctuation, associated words, text appreciation, sentence modification, meaning articulation, elimination of ambiguous sentences, long sentences changed to short sentences, Chinese character strokes, modern text reading, literary reading, plus two essays.

The third issue of Language Learning in 1992 published an article by Mr. Guo Zongming entitled "Trying to Discuss the Overall Mistakes of Language Teaching in the Past 40 Years". It discusses the mistakes in three aspects: the guiding ideology of teaching, the setting of teaching materials and teaching methods.

1. Guiding ideology

(1), too much attention to the study of how to teach students well, while ignoring the children and adolescents themselves have the potential to learn languages; only focus on how to teach some specific issues, ignoring the special rules of human mastery of language.

(2), too much attention to the study of pedagogy, while ignoring the teaching leader (teacher) to improve the quality and level.

2. There is a lack of authority, prescriptiveness and stability in the setting of teaching materials.

The "five blocks" teaching method (author's introduction, background of the times, the general idea of the passage, the theme of the idea, the writing characteristics), which has been prevalent since the fifties and seventies, only focuses on the analysis of the background of the text, the content of the text and the linguistic phenomenon, while ignoring the students' digestion and assimilation of the text itself.

The disadvantages of the "five fasts" were described with particular precision by Mr. Guo: "Instead of guiding and requiring students to master a certain amount of linguistic material at a specific stage, our language teaching raises questions and analyzes the linguistic material on a large scale, almost regardless of the stage. " While the purpose of our teaching is clearly to develop students' literacy skills, the actual practice is to analyze linguistic phenomena with students. For example, instead of asking students to be able to write a certain number of Chinese characters, they are asked to analyze the methods of creating characters (that is actually the business of the literalists); instead of asking students to master and correctly use a certain number of vocabulary words, they are asked to analyze the methods of combining words and phrases, and even the original meanings of the morphemes in the words (that is actually the business of the grammarians); instead of guiding students to practice composing fiercely, they are doing their utmost to use a number of "Instead of guiding students to practice compositions, they try to go around in circles on purely theoretical issues such as the difference between simile and metaphor, and the difference between borrowing and metaphors (that's actually a rhetorician's job).

Chinese language teachers are very sensitive to these problems that arise in the teaching process and dare to discuss the problems at a macro level. However, because they have not been baptized by modern linguistics and applied linguistics, they still use more of the old philological categories when they think about the problems, especially when they express them, and their language style is more impressionistic, intuitive, and illogical. This problem is reflected in the professional magazines at all levels of language teaching, and a considerable part of the controversial articles are not related to the principles, but are in fact the disputes over the meaning of words. Due to the failure to introduce new theoretical systems, new categories, and terminology, a large number of articles are limited to the narrowness of personal experience, and cannot be raised to the level of standardized language and recognized and consistent theories, resulting in the wisdom and experience being painful. This resulted in a heartbreaking loss of wisdom and experience. Before his death, Mr. Ye had called for "language teachers and language workers to collaborate in the study of language teaching and to improve language teaching as soon as possible." It is a pity that there are not so many people who know what he was talking about. In fact, after our observation, comparison and analysis, the problems of language teaching in China are firstly reflected in the "classroom politics", that is, the teacher-student relationship, and the "teacher-centered" theory has not been cleaned up for decades. Schools are nominally set up for students, but due to a de facto disregard for the fundamental interests of students, teacher quality is never on the agenda, teachers have no qualifications before taking up their posts, and student feedback on teachers' work is meaningless. Incompetent teachers fill the classrooms and their work is not subjected to any rigorous scrutiny from official or private bodies; they are left to read from a book and have nothing to say. For example, "The character for child, '童', has a '立' above it for setting up ambitions, and below it is a '里' for Dr. Bai Qiu'en's coming to China from thousands of miles away '." Even if they want to care about students' ability to use language, how can they possibly develop students' four skills when they have to stand on the podium and talk nonsense endlessly because they themselves cannot read or write well? Secondly, in terms of teaching methodology, the main focus is on indoctrination, a cumbersome philosophy, and lastly, when it comes to scientific research and evaluation of teaching, many people almost always subconsciously sidestep the issue, avoiding the biggest problem of language teaching in China: the low quality of teachers, and the still "teacher-centered" value orientation of school education. Many studies have endlessly analyzed the composition of the tea leaves, the texture of the cups, and even the temperature of the room, the timing of the tea, but very few admit that the tea is mainly only about the temperature of the water and the tea leaves, and that the water is cold and raw, and the tea leaves are good or bad, and that these important facts have been obscured.

The "five blocks" is a fault, focusing on the teaching of language forms, ignoring the four skills, the development of practical ability. Teaching instead of learning, speaking instead of practicing, "unlimited input suppresses the acquirer's power of observation, inference, creativity. Damage to the richness of the acquisition environment", but hindered the student learning. The "five blocks" are highly programmatic, disregarding the multiple meanings and forms of textbook interpretation and treatment, as well as the individuality and starting point of students.

However, language teachers are exploring "the roots" of the heritage of classical language teaching. The earliest pioneer in reflecting on China's classical language education tradition was Mr. Zhang Zhigong. His book, A Primer on Traditional Languages, was first published in October 1962 (Shanghai Education Press). In a 1984 reminiscence article, Mr. Zhang talked about how he systematically began to study this issue. At that time, it was out of a kind of basic negative bias to start the research, later, he gradually found that classical education is a "treasure trove", and in the political situation of 1962, he even put forward this point of view, so it can be seen that to do so requires a little bit of academic conscience, and found that this "treasure trove" is indeed worthwhile. (5,000-6,000 commonly used Chinese characters)

Chinese is a non-pinyin script (there is no connection between form and sound), and the fact that classical education has managed to solve one-third of the Chinese characters in 6-7 year olds is indeed a linguistic achievement with Chinese characteristics. The key to this achievement is the "Three, Hundred, Thousand" (Three Character Classic, Hundred Surnames, Thousand Characters), which have been in use for thousands of years. Rich in knowledge, life, fun, and easy to catch on, the words rhyme with the withdrawal, and not many repeated words on the three books, known as the miracle of ancient culture.

2. Literacy and writing are taught separately

Writing is taught in addition to literacy. And there is a reasonable order for practicing characters, first tracing, then practicing characters, first large capitals, then medium capitals, then writing small capitals.

3. Sentence training a genus to genus (such as: cloud to rain, snow to wind, evening sunshine to the clear sky) has many benefits: ① unknowingly have literacy and to the transition to sentence-making. ② Preliminary poetry training. ③Acquire a lot of knowledge and skills about the sound and rhyme of the words. ④ Learning rhetorical knowledge in practice.　

4. Composition training

Although the reputation of the eight stocks is bad today, but now many composition tutorials are not less than "narrative, argumentative essay, expository essay" types, but also to write the first topic sentence. Raise the issue, and then into the body, to be argued, and finally come to a conclusion. The ancients called "start, carry on, turn and merge", which set a certain pattern for the composition. Mr. Zhang believes that the problems of traditional language education include: ① Neglecting the spoken language and attaching importance to the written language, which is completely divorced from practical application. ②The purpose of training is to select officials.

From a purely technical point of view, the quality of traditional language education is far from being comparable to that of the present day. Even Lu Xun's Kong Yiji, though downtrodden, foolish, and good for nothing, a victim of the old system. However, none of us would doubt that almost all the Xiucai of that era could write a beautiful brush stroke and effortlessly accomplish any practical and theoretical style from eulogy to seven poems, and from New Year's couplets to academic essays. As for his ability to read the ancient scriptures, histories, sons and collections, doubt is superfluous.

Since Mr. Zhang Zhigong, in August 1991 The Outline of the History of Chinese Language Education, edited by Professor Zhang Longhua, was published. This is so far the only general history of education in China, starting from the pre-Qin Dynasty and ending in the 1980s, involving countless historical facts and spanning more than 2,000 years. It deals with issues related to the purpose of education, educational ideology, educational system, teaching materials and methodology. Contrary to Mr. Zhang Zhigong's reservations in the 1960s, Prof. Zhang Longhua started from the necessity of inheriting and developing traditional language education. According to Prof. Gu Huangchu, in recent years, some people have even openly proposed the restoration of traditional language teaching methods. The argument is based on the fact that the actual effect of language teaching is "not as good after the May Fourth as it was before the May Fourth, not as good after the war as it was before the war, and not as good after the Cultural Revolution as it was before the Cultural Revolution". After the 'Cultural Revolution', it is not as good as before the 'Cultural Revolution'," and "In language teaching, modern people can't beat ancient people." This sounds a bit radical, but modern language teaching has blindly introduced the morpho-grammatical categories of Latin language, cutting the Chinese language into pieces and bringing serious consequences to language teaching, which is really worth reflecting on. In fact, the literary language and modern Chinese language, some principles are *** common:

1, language education is always the mother tongue language identification, writing, understanding, use of knowledge transfer and skills training activities. A language morality is embodied in a set of symbol systems (phonetics, phonemes). Secondly, since there are four forms (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in which people use this system of signs, language can be understood as four skills. Finally, the purpose of using these skills defines language as a tool used for communication.

2. The failure of Chinese language teaching, in layman's terms, is the discarding of tradition and the loss of self. Mr. Zhang Zhigong suggests a new perspective -- leaving aside Latin categories -- to focus on the study of Chinese, but the damage has already been done. The "increasing coverage" of the language college entrance examination shows that the intrusion of the Latin grammatical system and norms into the Chinese language has reached a very serious point.

3. The drawback of Chinese language teaching is that it focuses on analyzing the form of the language and ignores the fact that the essence of the language is a tool for communication. Before the liberation of China, the Chinese language teaching "translation method", and later changed into the vernacular language, many people have come up with "five blocks", avoiding the essence of the problem that is to cultivate students' ability to use the language. They avoided the essence of the problem, which is to cultivate students' ability to use the language. They "did not talk" and "pretended to teach". No wonder Mr. Lu Shuxiang said, "A few students who are better at language, if you ask him about his experience, say in unison that it is thanks to reading books outside the classroom." In other words, if you don't learn it well, you meet a bad person; if you learn it well, you learn it on your own; and the teacher, "pretends to be teaching it." The reflection on classical language education by the old-timers in the Chinese language field is indeed a great inspiration for the improvement of Chinese language teaching:

1. The training of the genus pair combines grammar, rhetoric, sound and rhyme, culture and poetics in one furnace, which is a successful example of implementing the principle of situational teaching to the level of the written language.

2. Focus on literacy.

The possession of the primary foundation should strive to solve the problem of vocabulary, mainly in the use, but also to pay attention to rote memorization, such as vocabulary, poetry, famous articles, model texts.

3. The purpose of teaching is more scientific.

The classical examination orientation mobilizes all aspects of usual teaching: reading in order to write, absorbing in order to produce. The key to the success of language teaching is based on the cultivation of output ability rather than the cultivation of absorption ability, which is the secret of the success of classical language teaching.

Note: 1. Chinese Language, No. 8, 1979.

2. I and Language Teaching, edited by Liu Guozheng, People's Education Publishing House, 1984 edition 37 pages.

3. See page 167.

4, secondary school language teaching reference, 1992, No. 9.

5. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 1990, No. 3, Re-examination of Chinese Grammar, p. 1.

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More than 2000 years ago, Confucius's educational thought was vast and profound, it is an inexhaustible cultural treasure of the Chinese nation, it is a treasure trove of educational thought rooted in the foundation of traditional civilization. The study and inheritance of Confucius' educational thought will certainly be of great benefit to the current reform of language teaching in China.

I. The Influence of the Educational Ideology of "Teaching Without Classes" on Modern Students

Confucius's ideas are centrally embodied in the record of his speech, "The Analects", in which he argues that people's innate natures do not differ much, and that differences in personalities are formed later in life, and that "the lines are similar, and the habits are distant. Therefore, he attached great importance to the education of the latter, and advocated that "there should be teaching without discrimination". In our usual education and teaching, often consciously or unconsciously divided into three, six, nine, etc., artificially divided into some of our teachers believe that "unteachable" poor students, and ignored their education and requirements. Performance in the usual favor of students, one-sided pursuit of the rate of advancement, while ignoring all students, disregard for the middle students, aversion and even give up the so-called "poor students". Caused by such a reason is certainly multi-faceted, such as the influence of exam-oriented education, but the teacher's educational thinking is an important reason. Is our education and teaching oriented to all students or to a few elites? Is it to cultivate qualified citizens or just to select talents? The current reform of quality education requires all students to be oriented to the overall development of all students. We should not only break the thought that "poor students" are unteachable, but more importantly, we should establish the concept that "poor students" need more education. In fact, the main reason why these students are lagging behind in some aspects lies in the education itself, not in the innate quality of the students. Confucius put forward the idea of "similarity in nature and distance in practice" 2000 years ago. Therefore, we should be more responsible for each and every student, and in particular, we should strengthen the education of "poor students", which is also an inevitable requirement of the development of modern society. Of course, this is not to ask every student in the school performance is uniform, but in modern society, every student in some specific aspects of progress, so that beneficial to students, beneficial to society.

Second, Confucius equal teacher-student view of the contemporary teacher-student view of the impact

Confucius life of love and loyalty to the teaching, not to hide its learning, in the study of the countries and students with the students with the life and death, **** destiny of the relationship. Teachers and students have deep feelings for each other, close relationship. Confucius's "when benevolence, do not let the teacher" and "teaching" ideas, in the process of moral education is manifested in the teachers and students can criticize each other's democratic style of learning.

Confucius' view of teachers and students as equals can be reflected in a small matter: Confucius saw Nanzi, Zilu was very dissatisfied, and could not explain, so he had to point to the heavens and draw the ground to the Zilu swore a curse to express himself: "I have denied, the sky is sick of it! Heaven hates it!" Only in this way did he gain Zi Lu's understanding.

We also advocate equality between teachers and students today, but what we think of as equality between teachers and students is only in terms of personality, i.e., students should be treated as individuals. And more often than not, this is still just an abstract person, not a flesh and blood with personality and specialties, Confucius' teacher-student equality is also expressed in the learning and character, teachers and students have a mutual learning problem, in fact, today's secondary school students have a very wide range of knowledge structure, scope, sources, etc., although the teacher in the discipline of the knowledge structure, scope, and social experience is higher than that of the students, but does not include all aspects. Sometimes, we teachers in turn have to learn from our students. We must completely emancipate the mind, change the past kind of "teacher's dignity" idea, to establish a completely new, democratic and equal, teaching and learning the view of teachers and students.

Three, "teaching according to ability" and "not angry, not want to start, not want to send" enlightenment induced teaching method of modern language teaching view of the inspiration

Confucius's teaching ideas and teaching methods is to recognize the innate differences, but emphasize more "Learning to know" and emphasizes the importance of teaching according to ability. Confucius often used observation method and conversation method to understand students, they are not only the prerequisite for teaching according to materials, but also the prerequisite for teachers to carry out a series of work, without understanding students can not educate students.

Confucius' basic method of teaching students according to their aptitude is enlightenment and induction. He said: "not angry not start, not want to send out, lift a corner, but not to the corner of the opposite, then not to be repeated." Zhu Xi notes: "indignant, heart seeks to pass but did not get the intention; sentimental, mouth wants to speak but failed to look. Kai, said to open its mind, hair, said to reach its words." That is, "indignation" is a student for a problem is thinking, eager to solve and did not get through the mental state. At this time, teachers need to know how students think about the problem, to help students open their minds, is "Kai". "Sentimental" is a problem that students have been thinking, not yet mature, in the desire to speak but unable to express the state of mind. At this time, the teacher should help students clear understanding, clarify the concept, expressed in accurate language, even if the "hair". Confucius required that heuristic teaching be carried out in the psychological state of "indignation" and "wanting" of the students. The confrontation between heuristic teaching and injective teaching has a long history, and Confucius was the first creator of heuristic teaching. Confucius's principles and methods of heuristic teaching are a great inspiration for our educational reform today. Today's quality education requires that in education and teaching give full play to the main role of learning three more, respect the enthusiasm and initiative of students to learn, and guide students to learn to think, independently acquire knowledge and use knowledge, the principle requires the correct handling of the relationship between teaching and learning.

1, the establishment of teaching and learning teacher-student relationship, carry forward the teaching of democracy, full respect for students' individuality, inspiration and guidance.

2, stimulate students' interest in learning and desire for knowledge, fully mobilize the initiative of students to learn the language, guide students to think positively, learn to think about the problem of the method, and cultivate the ability of independent self-learning. Teachers should create teaching scenarios in the usual teaching, in a certain scenario to stimulate students' desire for knowledge. For example, in the teaching of language classes, the scenarios created should be aimed at the hot spots in society and the focus of students' thinking. The key to the problem of heuristic education and teaching lies in whether we can be consistent in the practice of education and teaching, and constantly improve the efficiency and enhance the students' ability to innovate and practice.

Four, "learning and thinking" "learning to use" on the modern language research learning method of inspiration

In the teaching theory of Confucius, he attaches great importance to "learning" and "thinking". One of the "question" in the teaching of more important significance, students as long as serious independent thinking, inevitably doubt, doubt is asked, asked for solutions, through different forms of questions and answers, students not only to increase knowledge, but also to develop the independent discovery of the problem, analyze the problem, solve the problem of habit.

If we take "learning" and "thinking" as the first and second stages of Confucius' teaching process, then "learning" and "practicing" are the third and fourth stages. If "learning" and "thinking" are taken as the first and second stages of Confucius' teaching process, then "practicing" and "acting" are the third and fourth. In the first and second stages, Confucius asked students to acquire and consolidate knowledge, and in the third and fourth stages, he asked students to transform knowledge into ability. The first sentence of the Analects of Confucius is "Learning and practicing at the same time is not a joyful experience". In the process of teaching, Confucius specially set up the stage of practicing and internship in order to cultivate students' practical skills, and it was a great creation of Confucius to include "learning" in the teaching process. The process of "learning and practicing" is not only a process for students to master the knowledge taught by the teacher and to develop their abilities. Confucius was the first to incorporate the idea of the consistency of knowledge and action into the teaching process, thus completing his teaching process of learning, thinking, practicing, and acting.

Confucius's view of the unity of blood, thought, practice and action is not without revelation to the "research-based learning" in our quality education today. "Research-based learning" is based on student autonomy, inquiry-based learning, under the guidance of teachers, from life and society in the study of the topic, through hands-on practice, to simulate the method of scientific research to obtain knowledge of the learning method. "Research-based learning" is the use of certain knowledge principles to guide the study, which requires students to "learning, thinking, practice, action" truly unified.

1, to have a deep knowledge of the subject. "Research study" both from the subject of research, or research methods, research process, research purposes should be related to certain knowledge, under the guidance of certain knowledge. It is hard to imagine that an illiterate person can engage in "research study". So to do a good job of "research study" must first learn the knowledge of various subjects, and grasp the intrinsic connection between the knowledge of various disciplines, do a good job of synthesis.

2, to have the ability to think independently and the spirit of "learning and thinking" combined. "Research learning" is based on self-reliance, exploratory, which requires people to give full play to their subjective initiative, "hard thinking", "good thinking".

3, to be able to "learn to use", the formation of the ability to participate in social practice, the knowledge learned into practice, on the one hand, to summarize the principles of social practice, on the other hand, to be able to use the principles to explain certain social phenomena, to enhance the discovery of the problem, analyze the problem, solve the problem of the ability. Combine "learning" and "use" to form practical ability and innovation ability. This is an important purpose of the current quality education. "Only learn, will not use" is not beneficial to modern society.

Fifth, Confucius' moral education process and method of contemporary language education concepts

Based on Confucius' educational practice and educational thought and his philosophical concept of knowledge and action, his moral process can be divided into three stages: the stage of moral awareness, moral emotions, moral behavior. In his teaching and educational work, Confucius always combined the transmission of knowledge with moral knowledge and paid attention to giving full play to students' subjective initiative. This is a reference for our moral education practice today, that is, we usually have to carry out the process of moral education into the teaching of each subject and dig out the factors of moral education from the teaching of the subjects. In fact, there is a rich humanistic spirit contained in the content system of each discipline, such as the rigorous scientific attitude of natural scientists and the sense of responsibility of sociologists towards the society, etc. All these require us to give full play to our subjective initiative to excavate in order to improve the humanistic spirit and moral quality of students.

Confucius had many methods of education, such as being careful with words, being consistent in words and deeds, reforming the past and changing the good, promoting the good and suppressing the state, self-cultivation, assisting benevolence with friendship, disciplining oneself, and setting a good example, etc. These have given us a lot of opportunities to improve our current moral education. All these give us a lot of inspiration for our current moral education. Traditional moral education emphasizes "indoctrination" but lacks emotion, emphasizes principles but lacks practical operability, and emphasizes thought but not behavior, all of which need to be improved.

1, the correct use of criticism and self-criticism, the combination of Yang and Yin. Confucius attaches great importance to consciously change the good, pay attention to the use of good and suppress the education means, the education effect is more significant.

2. Emphasis on self-cultivation. In the process of moral education, Confucius correctly dealt with the internal connection between introspection and external inspection. "See Yin Si Qi, see not virtuous and internal self-criticism also" 〉"Three people, there must be my teacher, choose its good and from it, and its not good and change". In our home field of moral education, if we can arouse students consciously "introspection", the moral understanding and feelings internalized into their own requirements and actions, it is a great success of our educational work. The teacher should be disciplined and set a good example. Teachers to be in moral education by good results, must pay special attention to "teach by example". Tzu said, "Teaching by example is better than teaching by words", "can't be its body, such as the correct people?" The power of example is infinite, the education of the personality and education of the moral level of the formation of high morality of students has a subtle influence.