Chinese classes in primary and secondary schools have changed books! Chief editor talks about teaching focus

　　Xinhuanet Beijing, August 22nd (Reporter Cao Ying Han Jiahui) In September this year, the newly enrolled primary and secondary school students in China will use the Chinese Textbook for Compulsory Education compiled by the Ministry of Education. In the next three years, the "Ministry Edition" will be gradually pushed to the whole country for use.

　　This is an important part of the national "three-subject teaching materials" (morality and rule of law, Chinese and history). What changes have been made in the new textbook? Where is the "new"? Recently, Professor Wen Rumin, editor-in-chief of Chinese textbooks for primary and secondary schools, accepted an exclusive interview with Xinhuanet, explained the characteristics of the new textbooks in detail, and put forward suggestions for their use.

　　Wen Rumin is the director of Peking University Institute of Chinese Education, a first-class professor of liberal arts in Shandong University, and the former head of the Chinese Department in Peking University. Wen Rumin introduced that this time, the compilation of Chinese textbooks adheres to the concept of "keeping integrity and innovation" and has many new ideas. The most important thing is to let Chinese classes return to reading, which is the "bull nose" of Chinese teaching.

　　Read more, read more, read the whole book.

　　According to a survey, the peak reading of students in China is in the first and second grades of junior high school. Primary school reading mainly depends on the teacher’s guidance and designation. After the third grade, it is very utilitarian to study and the interest is greatly attenuated. Many people have graduated from middle school but haven’t read many books, let alone developed reading hobbies and habits.

　　Why don’t children read? Many people blame exam-oriented education. In order to cope with the exam, students are busy doing problems and have no time or interest in reading extracurricular books.

　　Many sections such as "reading with adults", "happy reading bar" and "introduction to famous books" have been added to the textbook, and extracurricular reading has also been included in the teaching system. For example, the first-grade "Reading with Adults" advocates children to read stories, nursery rhymes, fables and popular science with their parents and teachers, and encourages the creation and use of various ways such as reading aloud, speaking and reading, dialogue and performance.

　　Wen Rumin said that the cultivation of students’ interest in reading can not only depend on the school, but also the family is very important. From listening to stories in kindergarten to paper reading in primary school, it is very important for parents to watch less TV, watch less WeChat, play less mahjong and read more books with their children in the early stage, which is very important to cultivate reading habits and stimulate reading interest.

　　The reporter combed and found that compared with the old "People’s Education Edition", the number of texts in the first volume of Chinese books in grade one decreased by 9 lessons, and the next volume decreased by 10 lessons. It seems that the number of text units has decreased, but in fact, the content has been enriched, especially the training in extended reading and oral expression has been greatly increased; After the third grade, the text is divided into intensive reading and skimming. The intensive reading class is explained by the teacher, giving examples and methods; Let the students read the skimming class by themselves, apply the methods learned in the intensive reading class to the skimming class and experience it by themselves. In addition, the supporting publication of the Chinese Literacy Reader provides a large number of good works that adapt to the development characteristics of children of different ages.

　　At the same time, efforts are made in several aspects, which reflects the main characteristics of "part-edited books" to expand reading, and establishes a reading teaching mechanism of "teaching reading-reading after class".

　　Wen Rumin said that for teachers, it is necessary to prevent skimming and extracurricular reading from becoming "intensive reading". Because there are more additional tasks and more pressure, children’s interest in reading is less. "Give children some time to read freely."

　　In fact, in recent years, the orientation of college entrance examination has changed, which directly puts forward new requirements for Chinese teaching. The Chinese examination paper for college entrance examination has increased from six to seven thousand words to eight to ten thousand words. Reading materials cover the vast fields of natural science and social science, and it is difficult for students to understand and complete answers without a certain amount of reading training.

　　As the director of Peking University Institute of Chinese Education, Wen Rumin has been encouraging China people to improve their reading interest and reading ability for many years.

　　In his view, to cultivate reading ability, children should basically read a lot from childhood, read some casual books, and read some deeper books, so that they can "read without understanding" and "read with crawling". Chinese class not only needs intensive reading and intensive speaking, but also needs to give students various practical reading methods, such as fast reading, browsing, skipping, guessing, group reading, discontinuous text reading and retrieval reading. Reading more books can really improve Chinese literacy.

　　Pinyin is less difficult to read and write, more recognition and less writing.

　　This year’s new primary school students get the Chinese textbooks and open them. This is the case:

　　The first lesson of "Ministry edition" is six regular script characters of "Heaven, Earth, Man" and "You, Me and Him", not the letter aoe. The change of this order has a special meaning, that is, Chinese characters are put in the first place, and Pinyin is only a tool to assist in learning Chinese. In addition, it is difficult for the first-grade children who have just entered the school to learn pinyin as soon as they come up. Putting off pinyin learning for about a month can reduce children’s fear of difficulties and cultivate their interest in reading.

　　"Chinese teaching in the first grade is very important. It’s hard to make up and it’s hard to teach. We must find ways to make students interested in reading from the beginning and gradually develop the habit of reading, which is the foundation of Chinese class. " Wen Rumin said.

　　"Part-by-part edition" reduces the difficulty of pinyin teaching. First-year students are required to spell syllables, but not necessarily to call syllables directly. Memorize the phonetic alphabet, but don’t force memorization and dictation; Combine pinyin teaching with word recognition teaching, and learn pinyin with word recognition, and integrate with each other.

　　"Divergent recognition and writing, more recognition and less writing" is the principle of compiling textbooks for lower grades. In the lower grades of primary school, the number of commonly used words has decreased from 1800 to about 1600, of which about 800 words can be written. The number of words recognized in the first volume of grade one has been reduced from more than 400 to 300. This is based on the research on the investigation of the reading word frequency of primary school students in Beijing Normal University. If you recognize these words first, you can transition to independent reading as soon as possible.

　　The "Bu Bian Ben" also arranged "multi-word recognition", that is, we should learn to recognize words through the shape, structure, radicals and so on without relying entirely on pinyin. Wen Rumin believes that, generally speaking, students can read independently by the next semester of the second grade as long as they follow the goals set by the textbook.

　　Text replacement nearly two thirds, the proportion of ancient Chinese increased.

　　This time, almost two-thirds of the texts in grades one to six were changed, which is called a "big change".

　　Wen Rumin introduced that when selecting texts, it relies on four criteria: classic, beautiful in style, suitable for teaching, and taking into account the times.

　　In the past ten years, all kinds of textbooks have put humanity in the first place, at the same time, they have paid attention to arousing students’ interest and selected more "current articles". In this edition, there are fewer "current articles" that have not yet been precipitated, and some classics are back.

　　For example, the proportion of traditional cultural articles has greatly increased. There are ancient poems since the first grade of primary school. There are 132 ancient poems in 12 textbooks of 6 grades of primary school, with an average of about 20 in each grade, accounting for about 30% of the total number of texts. Six volumes of ancient poetry in junior high school were selected into 124, and the weight was also increased. The genre of ancient Chinese prose is more diverse, from ancient folk songs to poetic quatrains, from papers in the Han Dynasty to essays in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In addition, revolutionary traditional education also accounts for a large proportion.

　　This time, to further increase the weight of classical Chinese, some people have worried that whether the learning method based on recitation in primary school will increase the burden on students and whether they can learn the true essence of ancient Chinese.

　　Wen Rumin believes that the teaching of ancient poetry emphasizes the beauty of poetry phonology and Chinese. Perhaps at first, it is unclear where the beauty lies, but it will gradually accumulate. Nowadays, some ancient poetry teaching is like surgery, which has lost that kind of "beauty". Pupils have a good memory, and reading and reciting more is the best way.

　　Wen Rumin also advocates reading ancient poems for students to recite. He said that recitation and recitation are not the same, which is easily confused in Chinese class. Recitation is self-reading, which is suitable for classical poems and articles with strong rhythm. It is eclectic and can "sing and read" in a way that you like and can better express your feelings. Recitation is a chorus of voices, which is conducive to creating an atmosphere, but it often has the nature of performance and is easy to form some stylized "accents". To learn classical literature, you should recite more and read it freely. You don’t have to dwell on the past. It is good to be immersed in it while reading.

　　Preventing repeated drills does not mean not training.

　　In the past ten years, the curriculum in various places has been changed to prevent exam-oriented teaching and repeated drills, and it is proposed that the teaching of grammar, rhetoric and Chinese knowledge should not be systematic, but should be "learned with the text". The writing team of the "Ministry Edition" believes that this starting point is good, but it also leads to the weakening of the knowledge system of Chinese teaching in actual teaching, teachers are not good at grasping the teaching knowledge points, dare not let go of setting up basic ability training, and the teaching gradient is disrupted. Some classes are very "fancy", but there is no "dry goods" that can be lived.

　　In view of this bias, the writing team proposed to focus on the basic requirements of Chinese core literacy, clarify the knowledge points and abilities of the course, and rebuild the knowledge system of Chinese textbooks. Textbooks should not be systematic, but they should always be systematic. It is required that the course content, objectives and teaching points of each grade and each unit should be more clear, so that front-line teachers can know what "dry goods" are when preparing lessons. At the same time, it puts forward clear requirements for teachers: to implement knowledge points and ability points, to be well-aware, and to know what requirements each grade roughly meets and how to achieve them.

　　The compilation of the Chinese "Ministry Edition" started in March 2012 and lasted for 4 years, and was published by People’s Education Publishing House. The writing group consists of 50 or 60 experts, writers, teaching researchers and editors, and there are hundreds of experts in various fields who have actually participated in the consultation of teaching materials. After more than 30 rounds of evaluation, hundreds of special-grade teachers read and dozens of schools in many provinces and cities tried teaching, some provinces and cities began to use this new textbook last year. This year, it will be used in the first grade of primary school and the first grade of junior high school nationwide.

　　Professor Wen Rumin said that it is "very popular" for the writing team to receive practical feedback from the front line. Some people commented that the compilation of this set of Chinese textbooks "returned to common sense and sought truth from facts".

Wen Rumin, editor-in-chief of Chinese textbooks for primary and secondary schools (Photo courtesy of People’s Education Society)