Why chant? Because it is the classical Chinese poetry

The Best ReasonThe Teaching and Research Office of the Education Bureau of Panyu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province Wang XiumeiFor many years, I have been devoted to the study of teaching classical poetry in elementary school. The reason is simple, because I like classical poetry. And the reason for liking it goes back to my childhood. When I was small, I was often with my aunt, who was kind and friendly, and who had only attended private school for two years, but she was very knowledgeable in my mind. Because she will tell historical stories, will sing the "Mulan resignation", "Southeast Peacock Flight", "Full River Red", "Song of Everlasting Hatred" ...... I seem to understand, but often because of her poignant recitation of sadness and sentimental tears. Now that I think about it, that was probably my earliest contact with chanting. And it is this kind of simple and even with the countryside soil air chanting, for me to sow the seeds of love of classical literature. Later, when I was in middle school, my teachers taught us ancient poems, explaining them word by word. Although I learned them very carefully and was one of the fastest in the class in terms of memorization, I always felt that there was something missing in the teacher's explanations. Years later, I became an elementary school language teacher, I always hope to lead students into the temple of ancient classical poetry, to inspire their love and yearning for this root culture. In teaching, I naturally do not want to use boring word-by-word explanations, but literature appreciation is tantamount to boring explanations for primary school students who do not have life experience and poetic literacy. Although reading aloud is highly valued and an important teaching tool, when reading aloud encounters ancient poetry, those techniques such as stress, tone, rhythm, and stopping immediately become pale and ineffective, and it is difficult to convey the unique mood, connotation, and rhythmic beauty of ancient poetry. I have also tried to bring students into the context of the poems through the aid of music, images or verbal rendering, but this is ultimately not the ultimate orientation of language learning. Over the years, the study of our own traditional classics has become a topic that many primary and secondary school teachers turn over and over again, and in a sense, is this not a sad thing? However, I still had to grope my way along the path of teaching ancient poems in elementary school in a confused and slow pace. Until one day, Prof. Xu Jianshun from the Central University for Nationalities came to train us in poetry recitation. In the first few lessons, like everyone else, I always found the chanting a bit strange, but the more I listened to it, the more friendly and comfortable it became, until every classical poem was like the sound of heaven, which made my heart yearn for it and made me hard to part with it. I finally realized that my aunt's chanting in my childhood was the seed of my obsession with classical poetry, and after that, I could always memorize it consciously without the teacher's hard urging. Therein lies the power of the seed. Why can't I sow such seeds to my students? "Teacher, you read some words with long sounds and some with short sounds." "Teacher, you read kind of like singing, it's so nice." How to chant? I strive to use the shortest language to teach children the easiest way to grasp. Begin to practice reading, "Luoyang" word, "Luo" word sound that is closed, "Yang" is dragging a long sound: one beat, two beats, three beats, some even infinite extension to go, the end of the sound varies, causing the children to laugh. The children laughed and said it was funny! "Long, short" has a measure, I say again "according to the word line cavity", such as "Yang" the second character, rise and long. If each flat character is dragging a long tone, it will read very hard, so we chant to each line of two, four, six words for strict compliance with the provisions of the flat-length oblique short, if the last word is flat also want to drag a long tone, the rest of the words can be vague. In the sentence "Seeing the autumn wind in the city of Luoyang," I used hand gestures to show: Luoyang ~ ~ ~ ~ ∕city ˇ ∕ see ∕autumn ~ ~ ~ wind ~. The students followed my chanting and watched my gestures over and over again, and for a while, the class shook their heads, half-singing, half-chanting, and it was very interesting. When the voices quieted down, I told the students that any kind of audible language that can convey emotions, reading, reciting, chanting, singing, need to have their own understanding of the text and feelings, for this reason, to go to meditate and read the text ...... So the chanting and the feeling of the poem are fused into one! In the chanting students told me to hear the autumn wind sough; saw standing in the prosperous city of Zhang Ji, do not see the prosperity, only see the loneliness of the autumn wind and the pedestrians hurry to leave before opening the envelope of the demeanor, demeanor ...... In the chanting children touched the homesickness of the heart, and their hearts are slowly quieted down. After class, a few students are still interested in the material, several ancient poems marked out the level and narrow, the length of the staggered chanting. One student looked up and said to me, "Teacher, the ancient poems are amazing! It turns out you can still sing them like this." "Do you like it?" I asked. "Love it!" Several children answered together. This is the simplest and best reason for teaching chanting! (This article is taken from <People's Education 2009, No. 23)